Woman SI run over in Jharkhand, constable in Gujarat

RANCHI/ANAND: Hours after a deputy superintendent of police (DSP) probing illegal mining was crushed under the wheels of a dumper he signalled to stop in Haryana, two more similar incidents were reported from Jharkhand and Gujarat.
While suspected cattle smugglers ran over a 32-year-old woman police officer trying to intercept their pickup truck at Tupudana in Jharkhand late on Tuesday, a police constable on vehicle-checking duty died after being run over by a truck in Gujarat’s Anand district in the early hours of Wednesday. This was a third incident in the country in the past two days where a police officer was mowed down while on duty.

Slain SI Sandhya Topno was part of a night patrol that had been checking vehicles on the highway near Hulhundu after being tipped off about a cattle-laden pickup truck heading towards Tupudana.
Topno spotted the pickup truck at a distance and signalled the driver to stop, ignoring which the latter drove straight into a patrol car before ploughing into her, said colleagues who witnessed the tragedy unfold.
The pickup truck overturned on impact and the driver was arrested, but his accomplice fled.
Topno, a resident of Singh More in Ranchi, was declared dead on arrival at Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences. The SI’s younger brother Ajit said he had dropped her at the Tupudana police outpost in the evening. “Around 3am, the police woke us up and called us to RIMS. My sister was dead by then.” Topno’s death triggered a political backlash against the JMM-led Hemant Soren government, with the opposition BJP demanding a CBI probe. Union tribal affairs minister Arjun Munda tweeted, “The way the SI’s death occurred, it looks premeditated. The Ranchi administration must dig deeper into the case.” Rajya Sabha MP and BJP state president Dee pak Prakash issued a video statement, accusing the Soren government of patronising illegal cattle trade.
Former CM Raghubar Das demanded a CBI probe along with Rs 1 crore in compensation to the kin of SI Topno. “A well-oiled syndicate is at work under the Soren government,” he said.