BIJNOR: The manhunt for TikTok "villain"

alias Ashwini, 30, ended with a dramatic twist after he allegedly shot himself dead in a roadways bus in Bijnor's Barhapur area on the intervening night of October 4-5.

A man with no past criminal record, Ashwini had jumped to the "most wanted list" in Bijnor with bounty of Rs 1 lakh on his head. More than 15 police teams were pressed into action to intercept him after his name came up in a double murder followed by a sensational murder of a woman.

According to Bijnor SP (Rural) Vishwajeet Srivastava, Ashwini's location was traced to Nagina area in Bijnor from where he was trying to flee to Delhi and had boarded a bus. A team of local police began surprise check in the area and stopped a roadways bus enroute Delhi at around 1.15am on Friday.

Ashwini was spotted after two constables who began checking passengers on the bus saw a suspicious man with his face half covered in a white handkerchief. If senior cops are to be believed, he drew his gun and shot himself in the head after he panicked upon police's presence. Later, he was identified as fugitive Ashwini.

With the biggest threat in the region neutralized, cops and victim's families have now heaved a sigh of relief. It all began with a sensational double murder. Son and nephew of a local BJP functionary were gunned down in broad daylight in Bijnor's Badapur area on September 26. According to police, Ashwini had shot dead cousins Rahul Kumar (25) and Krishna Kumar (26) over an old enmity.

Even before local police could get any breakthrough in the double murder, Ashwini struck again. This time it was 27-year-old Nitika Sharma who had spurned Ashwini way back in 2002. A recent news of Sharma getting married triggered Ashwini's anger and he barged into her house in Daulatabad area and pumped five bullets into her on September 30. She died a day later in a Moradabad hospital.

Ashwini, a graduate, comes from a humble background in Barhapur town of Bijnor. His father was a clerk in a sugarcane cooperative society in Dhampur tehsil and his elder brother works in a private company in Dehradun. According to the family, Ashwini also used to work with a private firm in Delhi, but abruptly gave it up.

Fond of uploading TikTok videos wherein he portrayed himself as a "villain", Ashwini was a drug addict and a chronic alcoholic. "He can survive without food but not without those sedating pills which he was addicted to. He used to consume 15-16 pills in one go," a sleuth privy to investigation said.