New Delhi: Gangster Ankit Gujjar, who was accused in the 2014 murder case of BJP leader Vijay Dahiya and labelled as Uttar Pradesh’s “most wanted criminal”, was found dead in the Tihar prison complex on Wednesday, August 4, morning. The Delhi Police is investigating the matter to ascertain if there is any foul play, as events leading up to his death raise questions, the Indian Express has reported.The preliminary investigation by police has revealed that Gujjar was murdered after he was beaten up severely by four persons. He was lodged in jail number 3 when he was found dead on Wednesday morning, according to DG (Tihar) Sandeep Goel. The police and jail officials are particularly probing into the role of deputy superintendent of the jail.Meanwhile, a police official said a medical board of three doctors had conducted a post-mortem of the victim on Thursday, revealing that injury marks were found on Gujjar’s body. Doctors believe that he may have succumbed due to internal injuries. The autopsy report would be submitted to the judicial magistrate. Two other jail inmates who were allegedly beaten up, and one of them has a fracture in his right hand, and they are being treated at DDU Hospital, the police official added.On Wednesday at 1:30 am, a jail official had lodged a complaint against Gujjar and two other prisoners alleging that they had assaulted the deputy superintendent of the jail, and the staff had tried to control the situation using “minimal force”. Within eight hours, Delhi Police received another call from the jail authorities stating that the 29-year-old gangster had been found dead inside the prison complex.The complaint that Gujjar and two other inmates were assaulting jail officials had been lodged by the jail’s additional superintendent at West Delhi’s Hari Nagar police station. Based on his complaint, police had filed an FIR (first information report) against Gujjar and two other prisoners for allegedly beating up jail staff.According to the additional superintendent, he had to file a complaint with police on August 3 due to the “violent behaviour” of the three inmates in question. He said that during a surprise search by jail staff on August 3 afternoon in ward 5A, they had found a mobile phone and a charge in cell number 26, where Ankit Gujjar, Gurjeet Singh and Gurmeet Singh were lodged.Following this, the jail superintendent had ordered the three inmates (accused) in question to be shifted to segregation cells in ward 2 as a form of punishment. However, the warden of ward 5A lodged a complaint with the deputy superintendent, Narendra Meena, that three accused had refused to shift to segregation cells in ward 2. Then, Meena along with a sewdar and jail staff went to ward 5A “to make the accused obey superintendent’s order”.According to the deputy superintendent, the accused then abused and assaulted the jail staff who went to ward 5A to ask them to shift to ward 2 segregation cells. “Sensing chaos, other jail staff… tried to control the situation using minimum force. In this incident, two jail officials were injured and sent to DDU hospital. Therefore, you are requested to kindly take appropriate legal action against the trio… as per law for putting hands on the uniform and attacking on duty jail staff,” Meena said in his complaint.However, Gujjar’s father, Vikram Singh, refused to believe the version put forward by jail authorities in their complaint that his son had attacked jail authorities. According to Singh, Gujjar was killed because they had refused to pay “protection money” to jail staff.Meanwhile, Singh has also shared a video in which an inmate, who shared the cell with Gujjar in jail, stated that the deputy superintendent had slapped his son and Gujjar had slapped him back. Following this, the inmate in the video says around “30-35 security personnel opened lathicharge and assaulted him for around 30 minutes”.Described as Uttar Pradesh’s “most wanted criminal”, Ankit Gujjar was said to have been involved in eight murder cases, and multiple robberies. He was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh Police in 2015, but he had come out on bail in 2019. After which, he shifted his base to Delhi.He was believed to have joined hands with a Delhi-based gangster Rohit Chaudhary to form the Chaudhary-Gujjar gang. They were keen on expanding their network in South Delhi, Hindustan Times has reported.The Uttar Pradesh Police and the Delhi Police had issued rewards on him. While the Uttar Police had announced a reward of Rs 1 lakh, the Delhi Police announced Rs 25,000 for catching Gujjar. He was finally arrested in September 2020 by Delhi Police and since then he was lodged in Tihar jail.Gujjar’s death under mysterious circumstances is the second such incident reported from Tihar jail. In May this year, an inmate Shrikant Rama Swami was murdered inside prison. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had only begun its investigation into Swami’s murder last month.
