Now, police say cop’s rifle not snatched, but got stuck in car

BATHINDA: After a search for four days, police here finally succeeded in recovering a self-loading rifle (SLR) which had been taken away from a cop posted at Bathinda Cantonment police station.

However, police ended up contradicting themselves. While, earlier, the cop had claimed the SLR had been snatched, they said on Wednesday that the SLR got lodged in the bonnet of a car when its driver tried to run over the cop at a check post. Police also succeeded in arresting the fifth accused in the cae. The weapon, however, was not recovered from the fifth accused, but from another person who had spotted it when it had slipped out of the bonnet a few minutes after the incident. Police have seized three illegal weapons from the five people who were in the car.

The police are also investigating why the person who spotted the SLR, did not report the matter to them earlier. Police said the five accused had at 3am on August 11, just before they had the run-in with police, had tried to snatch a car from a doctor and then made a snatching bid on another person near Bhucho.

The targets of the accued had alerted police about them, following which check posts were laid to nab the five men. When the accused arrived at one such check post around 3.11am, the driver smashed through the barricade and tried to run over a cop who was on the road.

His SLR stuck in the bonnet and car occupants sped towards Bathinda. At some distance, it has been now claimed, the car hit a girder placed to stop trucks and the weapon then slipped out.