Bhopal: In a scene straight out of a Bollywood movie, assailants armed with guns and baseball bats attacked a team of Odisha police escorting an alleged drug smuggler, Aditya Mishra, to a court in Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday.
The attackers managed to rescue Mishra from the police vehicle, before escaping from the scene.
MP police said the incident took place around noon on the Sidhi-Rewa district border, when the police vehicle carrying Mishra, an accused in an inter-state drug smuggling racket, was negotiating a sharp turn on a hilly road.
“According to the Odisha policemen, two cars each from the front and the back stopped their vehicle when it was going through a turn in Chuhiya Ghati,” Sidhi Superintendent of Police Santosh Kori said.
“The men in the four cars smashed the police vehicle’s windows with baseball bats, fired two to three rounds and sprayed something in the eyes of the Odisha cops before escaping with the accused,” the SP said.
Mishra, a native of Hanumana in MP’s Mauganj district, is accused in several cases under the NDPS Act and reportedly in a gang-rape case in Rewa district in that state.
Odisha police had arrested him with a large quantity of Ganja a few months ago, and he has been in judicial custody since then. The team was taking him to Rewa on Tuesday to produce him in a court in connection with the cases pending against him in MP.
Around 12 hours after the incident, several police teams from MP launched a manhunt for Mishra and those who helped him escape.
Sources said police had obtained leads about his accomplices and a breakthrough was expected in the next few days. Police suspect Mishra may have fled to neighbouring eastern Uttar Pradesh.
Only one Odisha policeman was injured, suffering a hand injury from the broken window, despite the team being surrounded by armed men.
Curiously, however, it remains a mystery as to why the police escorts, who were possibly carrying automatic weapons, did not fire back at the attackers. This question is likely to form part of the investigation.