Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Twenty five years after he led the team of India’s first special task force against organised crime (UPSTF) in gunning down Sriprakash Shukla, one of the most dreaded gangsters of Uttar Pradesh, ex-IPS officer Rajesh Pandey launched his book, Operation Bazooka:
The True Story Behind the Hunt for the Most Dreaded UP Gangster, in Bhopal on Saturday. One of the founder members of UPSTF, he led the UP police team in eliminating Shukla, his aides Anuj Pratap Singh and Sudhir Tripathi in gunfight in Ghaziabad district’s Indirapuram on September 22, 1998.
The book’s co-author is journalist turned media studies professor Rakesh Goswami. The book tells the entire gory history of organised gang war between rival gangs of eastern UP, Bihar and Shukla in the 192-page book. This is the first book penned by Pandey who had gunned down over 72 dreaded criminals in UP during his police career, which ended as IGP, Bareilly.