Encounter Specialist: Mumbai Police’s Encounter Specialist Pradeep Sharma has been sentenced to life imprisonment in the 2006 fake encounter case. Sharma had killed Chhota Rajan gang member Ramnarayan Gupta alias Lakhan Bhaiya. 62-year-old Sharma was earlier acquitted by a Mumbai court. It is said that when Pradeep Sharma was in service, the entire underworld used to tremble at his name. He has encounters of 112 gangsters to his name.
Encounter Specialist: Let us know who is Pradeep Sharma, who was jailed for 11 years.
- Pradeep Sharma is a police officer of 1983 batch, during which there were many strong policemen in Mumbai Police. These include Vijay Salaskar, Praful Bhosle, Ravindra Angre and Vinayak Soudhe. These policemen had given water to the entire underworld. He had deceived gangsters like Dawood Ibrahim Salaskar, Chhota Rajan, Arun Gawli, Amar Naik a lot.
- In 1999, Sharma along with his team had killed Chhota Rajan’s associate Vinod Matkar. Vinod was given the task by Chhota Rajan to kill Dawood Ibrahim in Pakistan. In the same year, Sharma had shot Dawood Company’s gangster Sadiq Kalia in Dadar.
- In 2003, Sharma and his team had killed three Lashkar terrorists in Goregaon area. Among them, Abu Sultan and Abu Anwar were Pakistani citizens.
- Pradeep Sharma has been associated with controversies. In August 2008, he was dismissed from police service after his connections with the underworld were revealed. However, on the orders of the Administrative Tribunal of Maharashtra, he was taken back into service in May 2009.
- Pradeep Sharma was arrested in 2010. He had killed Chhota Rajan gang member Lakhan Bhaiya in an encounter in November 2006, which turned out to be fake. However, Sharma was acquitted in this case in 2013 after serving 4 years in jail.
- In 2017, he was reinstated in the police and was appointed head of Thane Police Anti Extortion Cell. In July 2019, he resigned from the police job and joined Shiv Sena. He also contested the assembly elections from Nalaspora in Mumbai but lost.
- Pradeep Sharma was arrested for the second time in 2021. He was caught by NIA. He was accused of planting explosives near Antilia.