BHOPAL: Villagers in a remote Morena village in Madhya Pradesh shot dead a ‘dacoit’ after a gun battle on Friday, turning on its head Chambal valley’s old reputation of dreaded dacoity.The ‘dacoits’ were trying to extort money from the villagers in Karna Manpur village — about 40 km from Morena district headquarters.Villagers told police seven dacoits, five armed with guns, had come to the village last week telling them to pay up Rs 50,000 and ghee . “Last night they came again asking for money. When they fired, the villagers too fired in defence,” said Morena SP Amit Sanghi.Villagers went into the gunbattle with a Bharmar gun, said police. The dacoit’s body was found in the morning, and is yet to be identified. Sanghi said it was sent for post-mortem and the goon’s pictures were released to police in Rajasthan and UP for identification. “There are no listed dacoits in the region so we’re trying to identify the deceased,” said the SP, adding that more gang members were likely injured as police found traces of blood around 500m from the spot of the gun battle.Police also suspect the extortionists may have been criminals on the run. “We were on the hunt for some criminals. The one who was shot dead may have been one two who carry a bounty of Rs 16,000. We’re verifying his identity,” Sanghi said.The region is an intersection of MP, Rajasthan and UP, making it easy for gangstersto slip across borders. It took the Chambal-Vindhya area — of Morena, Bhind districts of MP — nearly 40 years to get rid of home-grown dacoits.The last encounter of dacoits was in Morena in March 2007, when nine bandits were gunned down, including Jagjivan Parihar , who had a bounty of Rs 9 lakh on his head. The gang had an AK-47 and other automatic weapons and had killed an inspector and five cops.