Bootlegger gang exchanges fire with police in Dahod

Vadodara: It may look like a scene from a Bollywood movie, but it actually happened in Dahod. A gang of bootleggers and a team of police personnel exchanged gunfire late on Tuesday night. No one was injured in the incident that occurred when the policemen were chasing the bootleggers near Pachiyasal village under Sagtala police station.
The gang also tried to run over some police personnel who were travelling in a vehicle in Devgadh Baria taluka near the Gujarat-Madhya Pradesh border.
Police said that a team of state monitoring cell (SMC) was keeping an eye on the road to Pachiyasal village after it received a tip-off that liquor was going to be smuggled from there. En route, they spotted a suspected four-wheeler and intercepted it.
The police team checked the vehicle and found liquor boxes inside. Before they could act, five to six other vehicles came from behind. One of the key accused, Bhikha Rathwa, along with Ramesh Koli, got down from one of the cars and fired one round. About 22 other men travelling in the other vehicles too rushed towards the cops with weapons in hands. The cops first fired one round in air and asked Rathwa to surrender but he fired another six to seven rounds, following which the police too fired three more rounds, said the FIR filed by SMC police inspector R S Patel. “When the team asked a suspected vehicle to stop, its occupants opened fire on police. SMC officials retaliated by firing some rounds in air. No one was injured in the firing,” said Jagdish Bangarva, assistant Superintendent of Police, Dahod.
The gang fled but a team of SMC managed to seize one of the cars used by the accused. A complaint of attempt to murder and under the Arms Act was registered against Rathwa, Koli and 22 other persons at Sagtala police station.
The bootleggers were reportedly trying to smuggle liquor from MP into Gujarat.