A man wanted for the murder of a politician in UP arrested after 16 months

The UP Special Task Force (STF) arrested the main accused in the murder of a Block Panchayat member from Moradabad in Saharanpur on Wednesday evening, senior police officials said here on Thursday.

They said the location of the accused was tracked for about 16 months and he kept changing his residence and stayed at different places in Punjab and Haryana to evade arrest, adding that he was carrying a reward of ₹1 lakh on his head.

A senior STF official said that the accused has been identified as Bijnor resident Vikash Singh Dhama, who was involved in the sensational murder of block panchayat member Anuj Chaudhary when Chaudhary was walking near his house in Parshvanath Colony in Moradabad on August 10, 2023. He said he was shot dead two attackers on motorcycles.

He said Dhama was part of a gang of assailants who scouted the slain block panchayat member and carried out the killing. He said the murder of the block panchayat member was carried out by contract killers who were offered this option ₹30 lakh from Prabhakar Chaudhary and Anikesh Chaudhary, the husband and son of sitting Block Pramukh Santosh Devi respectively.

The official said that the murder was a fallout of Anuj Chaudhary’s numerous enmities and three different groups joined hands to assassinate him. He said that Anuj contested for the Block Pramukh seat against Santosh Devi and lost the August 2021 elections. He said that he tried to file a no-confidence motion against Santosh Devi but his plan was foiled as the state government introduced new restrictions which did not a vote of confidence in the selected Pramukh Bloc could not be submitted earlier than in two years. So he planned to file a no-confidence motion against Santosh Devi on August 20, 2023, after two years, and her husband and son were worried about it, so they came up with a plan to eliminate him.

He said that one Mohit Chowdhary along with his brother Amit Chowdhary joined hands with Santosh Devi’s husband and son when Anuj Chowdhary attacked Mohit in 2020 when he was questioning the election of a bloc member and as a result, he lost an eye. Later, one Karamveer Singh also joined them in wanting to get rid of Anuj Chowdhary in response to his regular pressure to come back ₹He borrowed Rs 70 lakh from him.

He had earlier said that nine people were involved in the murder, including Prabhakar Chaudhary, his son Aniket, Aniket’s friend Neeraj Pal, Amit Chowdhary, Kamal Veer Singh and his Pushpendra Singh, and three contract killers, Surya Kant Sharma, Sushil Sharma and Akash Kashyap , were arrested in 2023.