The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: The janitor accused in the Badlapur child sexual assault case was allegedly killed in a police encounter in Thane on Monday (September 23), the Indian Express reported.
Senior police officials from Thane police alleged that the accused, Akshay Shinde, snatched a policeman’s pistol and shot at the police team escorting him. Officials said that he was shot dead while attempting to escape police custody.
According to the police, Shinde fired three rounds, injuring a police official. The incident occurred at the Mumbra bypass in Thane district while the police were escorting him from Taloja jail in Navi Mumbai to Thane for a separate case filed by his second wife in 2022, accusing him of unnatural sexual assault.
The janitor was accused of assaulting the two children on August 12 and 13 at a girls’ bathroom in a school in Thane’s Badlapur.
The matter had come to light when one of the girls complained of pain and spoke of it to her parents, who then discovered that another girl had been similarly assaulted. Shinde was arrested on August 16.
Three police officials, including a senior police inspector, were suspended over alleged dereliction of duty in probing the case.
Massive protests had ensued in Badlapur in August after the incident became public. The Maharashtra police had registered first information reports against more than 400 protesters and arrested at least 66 of them on August 21 as agitation escalated against the sexual abuse of two four-year-old girls. A day later, the Bombay high court had taken suo moto cognisance of the case.