Who alerted the killers? Muslim man acquitted after 18 years in jail, gunned down outside UP police Station

Serious suspicions of police complicity surround the cold-blooded murder of Mohammad Sharif, who had spent nearly eighteen years in prison before being acquitted by the Allahabad High Court in a terror case, as immediately after he left the police station, motorcycle-borne assailants unleashed a hail of bullets to ensure his death, raising questions about who had informed them of Sharif's departure.

Summoned to the Khajuria police station in UP for verification, he was sent away without it, only to be shot dead by motorcycle-borne assailants who unleashed a hail of bullets at him barely 500 metres from the station, Maktoob media reported.

Sharif, a resident of Badanpuri-Khajuria village, was returning home on Tuesday when the assailants intercepted him and opened fire, firing as many as 16 bullets at him, according to eyewitnesses, and leaving him dead.

Advocate Mohammad Shoaib, his counsel and president of the human rights organisation Rihai Manch, told Maktoob that Sharif's brother, Shaheen, alleged that police had repeatedly telephoned Sharif on Monday, asking him to visit the Khajuria police station for verification.

According to Shaheen, police officials had persistently telephoned Sharif on Monday, instructing him to report to the Khajuria station, but as he showed up at the police station at around 4.30 pm, neither Station House Officer Manoj Kumar Pandey nor Constable Bunty—the very officers who had summoned him—was present at the post.

He was made to wait at the station until 5.30 pm, and the personnel on duty instructed him to return at a later date, but as he stepped out, the ambush unfolded, with eyewitnesses reporting that the assailants fired sixteen rounds at him, leaving doctors at the hospital to pronounce him dead on arrival.

Advocate Mohammad Shoaib has demanded an immediate and impartial inquiry, as the sequence of events points strongly towards a calculated conspiracy, raising suspicions about police officials: why were the police officials who summoned Sharif absent, and who could have alerted the gunmen to the exact moment of Sharif’s departure from the premises?

"Who informed the assailants that Sharif had left the police station? Why was he repeatedly summoned, and why were the officers who called him absent when he arrived?" Shoaib asked.

Rihai Manch general secretary Rajeev Yadav said the killing exposed the continuing suspicion and prejudice faced by Muslims accused in terrorism cases, even after their acquittal by courts. He questioned the need for police verification after Sharif had been cleared of the principal charges.

The killing comes months after the Allahabad High Court, in October 2025, overturned the death sentences imposed on Sharif and three others in the 2008 Rampur CRPF Group Centre attack case, acquitting them of terrorism and murder charges.

The court, however, upheld their convictions under Section 25(1-A) of the Arms Act, sentencing them to ten years' rigorous imprisonment and imposing a fine of Rs 1 lakh each. Since their periods of custody were to be counted towards the sentences, Sharif was released from Bareilly Central Jail in November 2025.

The original attack, which began on the night of December 31, 2007, and continued into January 1, 2008, claimed the lives of seven CRPF personnel and a rickshaw puller.