#6 Encounter specialists are back in action
Mumbai, ians:
Time magazine has called them the “Dirty Harrys of Mumbai.” They have also inspired many Bollywood movies, thanks to their action-packed real-life scripts, laden with thrills and dangers.
The fabled, and sometimes notorious, sharpshooters of Mumbai Police — known euphemistically in local parlance as “encounter specialists” — are back in the news again.
Stung by the horrific July 11 Mumbai blasts, the police top brass have called in some of the encounter specialists, to add the much-needed teeth to its intelligence gathering machinery.
Mumbai Police Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), entrusted with the probe, is planning to draw heavily on the experience and expertise of the gunfight specialists and officers.
They include suspended police officers like Sachin Vaze; Daya Nayak, a sub-inspector, who gained notoriety as an “encounter specialist”, with alleged underworld connections; Vinod Bhatt, then assistant commissioner of police, who was part of the team that cracked the 1993 serial blasts case; Naval Bajaj, deputy commissioner of police; inspectors Vijay Salaskar and Pradeep Sharma.
Nayak, who hit headlines in the late 90s as a crack gunfight expert, after killing 83 gangsters in “encounters”, found himself arrested along with mentor Pradeep Sharma, and then suspended six months ago, charged with being in cahoots with the same underworld he had once pledged to annihilate.
He had even received threats from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence for his persistent attack on the underworld.
Thirty-seven year-old police inspector Vijay Salaskar, along with his then boss and deputy commissioner of police Parambir Singh were instrumental in breaking the backbone of underworld don-turned-politician Arun Gawli's gang by eliminating most of his sharpshooters.
Salaskar came into public eye after he killed the dreaded underworld don Amar Nayak in an encounter in central Mumbai in 1997.
Salaskar joined the force as a sub-inspector and rose to fame by killing Gawli's most ruthless sharpshooter, Bandya, who was allegedly the city's top extortionist.
After his fall from favour in 2005, Mr Salaskar was given charge of the city's Anti-Robbery Squad, but is now part of the elite group of sleuths probing the July 11 blasts.
Forty-four-year-old senior inspector, Predeep Sharma, with 107 “encounters” under his belt was the first Maharashtra police officer to have been featured on the cover of the Time magazine's international edition.
Sharma shot to fame after he killed two gangsters of the Dawood Ibrahim gang in 1990. He also shot dead three alleged LeT terrorists involved in the Mulund train blasts at Goregaon in 2003.Their individual investigation skills are exceptional, says their former boss.
“They have exceptional intelligence-gathering skills,” praised former Mumbai crime branch chief and now DIG, state reserve police force, Parambir Singh.
These former encounter experts with their well-oiled network of informants have become instrumental in piecing together vital nuggets of information in the blast probe according to ATS.
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Police in India killed a suspected Pakistani terrorist and arrested another in India's western Mumbai city Tuesday after claiming to have made a breakthrough in last month's bombings in the city that killed over 180 people, news reports and officials said. According to the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), the terror suspect, Mohammed Ali, alias Abu Osama, was killed in a gunbattle in the early hours of Tuesday in the city's Antop Hill. 
