“ENCOUNTER specialist” Pradeep Sharma, a Maharashtra Police Senior Police Inspector, who once featured on the cover of Time magazine and is reputed to have gunned down over 150 criminals and terrorists has put down his papers after 35 years of service.

Pradeep Sharma 

 

Presently, chief of Thane Anti Extortion Cell (AEC), Sharma sent in his resignation to the Director-General of Police a fortnight ago, and is awaiting his relieving orders from the State Government.

 

Openly harbouring political ambitions since long, Sharma is likely to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and contest the Assembly elections from Andheri constituency in north-west Mumbai, or Nalasopara town in Palghar district.

Though confirming his resignation, Sharma kept mum on taking the political plunge to media-persons, claiming he has not yet made up his mind, and remains busy with social work through his NGO, PS Foundation.

 

Once dreaded by the underworld and idolised by the masses as an “Encounter Specialist”, Sharma along with other prominent “encounter specialists” of the 1990s like Vijay Salaskar, Praful Bhosale, Arun Borude, Aslam Momin, Raju Pillai, Ravindra Angre and Daya Nayak helped “clear up the city of organised crime activities”. At one point, as with many of his other “encounter specialist” colleagues, he got embroiled in the custodial death of a terror suspect Khwaja Yunus in 2003, and was transferred to Amravati.