In times of acute shortage of money, Uttar Pradesh police constables Shahzad Ali and Dipanshu Tyagi have earned cash and heroism. Early this week, the duo bravely helped catch a fleeing Palwinder Singh, who is a dreaded gangster and the alleged main conspirator of Nabha jailbreak. Their gallantry has been awarded with a police Director General’s commendation disc and Rs 50,000 for each of them.
Singh, who helped six Khalistani terror undertrials escape from Nabha jail in Patiala, was arrested by Kairana police in Shamli district of West UP on Monday. Following his arrest, the other escapees too were nabbed.
Feebly built and till now scarcely known, Ali and Tyagi are now the most talked about personnel in the UP police.
“They showed exemplary bravado and nabbed a strongly built criminal after a long chase and an exhaustive fight,” said Umesh Rohria, the Station House Officer of Kairana police station, where both of them have been posted.
As the news broke of Singh’s arrest on Monday, Ali and Tyagi’s efforts were immediately lauded by senior police officials. Javeed Ahmad, the Director General of Police, UP, tweeted praising their valour and later announced that their names were being sent for a bravery award.
Ali and Tyagi shared their experience of that fateful day with The Sunday Guardian. “On Monday, we were alerted by our seniors to keep track of a certain Fortuner SUV which might sneak into Shamli from Panipat, Haryana. In the evening, we spotted the vehicle near Kairana bus station police post. As we approached the vehicle to stop it, the driver panicked and tried to run us over. Somehow, we managed to insert a barrier under it and it halted. The driver, a strongly built bearded man, alighted and ran into the main bazaar in the town. Both of us chased him. After sprinting for about one kilometre, he entered an alley which luckily was a deadend. As we tried to apprehend him, he started fighting with us. He even tried to snatch our (Ali’s) service revolver. But somehow, we managed to not let him run away despite being bruised and alerted the then assembled public to call other members of our team. As our colleague, Rampal Yadav, came to our aid, the driver surrendered. Later, our kotwal sahib (SHO) arrived and he told us that the arrested driver was Palwinder Singh, the kingpin of the Nabha jailbreak. A huge cache of arms was also found from his car. We took him to our police station and then our senior officials came and congratulated us for our efforts,” the duo told this correspondent over phone.
Uttar Pradesh police constables Shahzad Ali and Dipanshu Tyagi have earned both cash and heroism.
They added that they didn’t expect any award for their “duty”. “But DGP sahib himself announced to fete us. Since Monday all our seniors have been praising us. We are the apple of everyone’s eyes,” they added.
But they also said that their senior officials have told them to go to some unknown place for some days because of the perceived risk to their lives.
Ali, the eldest of his family, is from Luxar, Haridwar in Uttarakhand. He joined the police in 2006 and expects that now he might be promoted as a head constable.
Tyagi, a resident of Siyana, Bulandshahr, joined the police service only last year and is still a trainee. He hopes that an award-winning performance early in his career will inspire him to be more dutiful and will earn him respect.