Gurtaj Bhullar’s wife Gurpreet Kaur shot dead: In a shocking incident, the wife of a Uttarakhand BJP leader was gunned down as the Uttar Pradesh police clashed with the locals in Bharatpur village in Uttarakhand’s Udham Nagar district, after they arrived at the location to arrest an individual allegedly linked to the sand mining mafia, news agency PTI reported.

The incident led to the death of the BJP leader’s wife and also injured five others, including four cops. Two cops suffered bullet injuries and were taken to a private hospital in Moradabad.

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Acting on a tip-off, the a Special Operations Group (SOG) of Thakurdwara police station in the adjacent Moradabad district raided the residence of senior block leader Gurtai Bhullar in Bharatpur on Wednesday night to look for the accused, identified as Jafar, the UP Police told PTI.

After a heated verbal exchange, both parties allegedly opened fire on each other. Bhullar’s wife Gurpreet, who was on her way to home from work, lost her life as a result.

The local police were not formally informed by their Uttar Pradesh counterparts about the operation, according to PTI. Enraged by the incident, the local residents took to the highway and blocked it. They were joined by Kashipur legislator Trilok Singh Cheema, Gadarpur legislator Arvind Pandey and ex-MP Balraj Passi.

Based on a complaint by Gurpreet’s family, the Uttarakhand police booked their UP counterparts under several provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) including sections 147 (rioting), 148 (rioting, armed with deadly weapon), 149 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object), 302 (murder), 452 (house-trespass after preparation for hurt, assault or wrongful restraint), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and 120-b (criminal conspiracy). The highway was cleared at 11 pm after the local police managed to dissuade the angry protesters.

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“The police team reached the spot acting on this information but it was fired upon from the other side. Two police personnel sustained bullet injuries on their leg and a total four personnel, including the Station House Officer (SHO), were injured,” Deputy Inspector General (DIG), Moradabad, Shalabh Mathur was quoted as saying to PTI.

The block leader and the ones who assisted him in the violence were subsequently booked by the local police for clashing with the UP cops and even allegedly taking their weapons away, PTI reported.