Most wanted criminal of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh arrested with AK-47, ammo in Gopalganj

PATNA: A team of Special Task Force (STF) and Gopalganj police arrested a most wanted criminal Munna Mishra along with an AK-47 assault rifle and its 28 live ammunitions from a village Pakahan under Kateya police station area in Gopalganj district on wee hours of Friday.
The village shares its border with Deoria district of Uttar Pradesh (UP). Munna, having three more aliases as Dilip Mishra, Manoj Mishra and Eknayan Mishra, was coming to Gopalganj that time on a bike from Uttar Pradesh.
STF sources said that extensive use of human intelligence was made to arrest Mishra as he didn’t use any type of phones to avoid surveillance.
They said that Munna was carrying a reward of Rs 50000 declared by the DGP and was continuously evading arrest since 2015.
Gopalganj SP Anand Kumar said that till now they have been able to dig out 37 criminal cases of heinous nature against Munna that mostly includes murders and extortion registered with different police stations in Gopalganj.
The SP said that out of the 37, there are at least 14 criminal cases registered between January 26, 2017 and May 24 this year in which either he was evading arrest continuously or was declared absconder by court.
“Besides Gopalganj, he was also active in Siwan and Deoria, UP. We are gathering details from the police of these two districts. We expect that the total count of criminal cases registered against Munna would exceed 50 once criminal details against him from the other two districts come up,” Kumar said adding Munna is evading arrest from UP police too.
SP said that he had killed a key witness of a murder case on September 6 last year and then a trader for denying to pay extortion on May 24 this year, both under Kateya police station area.
“He had used the same AK-47 assault rifle in both murders which has now been seized by police. Munna has shared details about the source from where he had procured the automatic weapon but police can’t disclose it at present,” Kumar said.
SP Kumar said that Munna used to operate in a different way in which he never made any extortion calls to anyone.
“He would directly reach residences of a contractor who had got any tender or a businessman for extortion. He gave a fortnight’s time payment. One additional chance was given after failure to pay after first deadline. Later, he used to execute them. One killing resulted in other contractors or businessmen falling in line out of fear,” he said.
Kumar said that Munna has been an active criminal since 1998. He said first criminal record of Munna is of a murder he committed on April 12, 1998 under Kateya police station. “He was in jail for at least five years and had come out on bail in 2015 to become active again,” SP said.
The SP said that Munna had hideouts in Gopalganj, Siwan and Deoria. “At least seven gang members of Munna had already been arrested. At least three more are yet to be nabbed for whom continuous raids are going on. Munna was police’s prime target as he was the gang leader,” he said.