PRAYAGRAJ: The Special Task Force (STF) of UP police gunned down notorious bandit Udaybhan Yadav alias Gauri Yadav, a resident of Belhari village, near Madho Bandha forest area under the limits of Bahilpurwa police station of Chitrakoot district early Saturday morning.
An AK-47 rifle, an old model of semi-automatic rifle, one 0.12 bore factory- made gun along with a huge cache of cartridges have been recovered from the spot.
The STF claimed that the slain dacoit was carrying Rs 5.5 lakh cash reward on his head, including Rs 5 lakh by UP Police and Rs 50,000 by MP Police and was presently involved in extortions.
According to ADG, STF, Amitabh Yash, based on accurate inputs that the members of inter-state gang (IS 30), including Gauri Yadav, were assembling near Madho Bandha forest, two specially constituted STF teams cordoned the area.
Some time later, the STF team spotted a group of armed men standing around a bonfire and asked them to surrender. The men immediately fired upon the team. In the ensuing exchange of fire Gauri Yadav was killed.
“He was under our scanner for a long time and has escaped during earlier encounters. Our teams were keeping a close watch and taking note of all his activities. His killing is a major success in suppressing criminals in this region,” Amitabh Yash told reporters.
With the elimination of Gauri Yadav, no major bandit gang is left in the hilly forested areas of Chitrakoot and adjoining districts.
According to the police dossier, Gauri Yadav was born in village Belhari in 1976 and had executed his first crime in 2005 in Nayagav police station area of Satna district of MP and an extortion case was filed against him. The dacoit later had several encounters with both MP and UP police forces separately in the same year.
The dossier also revealed that STF had arrested Gauri Yadav on January 19, 2009 and recovered a looted police SLR along with a magazine from him.
In 2013, Gauri Yadav had been accused of killing a Delhi police sub-inspector, following which a case under sections 147, 148, 302, 307, 404, 353, 186 and 120 B of IPC was registered.
Moreover, the bandit had also kidnapped and murdered a youth in Manikpur area of Chitrakoot district in 2017.
Police claimed that a total of 50 cases were registered against the dacoit in different police stations of the two states.
Like the slain major bandits Dadua and Thokia, Gauri Yadav too loved to show off the latest sophisticated weapons and branded articles. He literally ruled over Patha and adjoining forest areas for more than two decades.
Police had eliminated major bandit gangs of Shiv Kumar alias Dadua (July 22, 2007), Ambika Patel alias Thokia (August 4, 2008), Sundar Lal alias Ramsiya Patel (December 24, 2011), Sudesh Patel alias Balkharia (July 15, 2015) and Baluli Kol and Lovlesh Kol (September 15, 2019) in the hilly regions of Chitrakoot and along the UP-MP border between 2007 and 2019.
