By Shishir Prashant 
PrashantNews
After a couple of murders shattered peace in Dehradun city, a top gangster in mining business was killed near the famous Silver City Cinemas at the upscale Rajpur Road in Dehradun Friday morning in what appeared to be an inter-gang rivalry, police said.
As the more details of the killing emerged, top police officials said the murder of Vikram Sharma (50) could be a fallout of some retaliation in an inter-gang rivalry. Sharma who was the owner of a stone crusher in Udhamsingh Nagar in Uttarakhand, was shot dead when he was returning home at 10:15 AM from a gym in Parsvnath Eleganza Mall which also houses Silver City Cinemas.
Sharma, who was facing at least 50 criminal cases including murders, in Jharkhand and other states, received multiple bullet wounds in the head and died instantly, police said. He was heading a highly notorious gang in Jharkhand in association with another top gangster Akhilesh Singh.
A postmortem of the body is being conducted.
Sharma who used to shuttle between Jamshedpur in Jharkhand and Dehradun was spreading his mining business in Uttarakhand. He was living in a flat in Dehradun.
The assailants, understood to be in 2-3 in number, escaped immediately after committing the crime, SP City Pramod Kumar said. The motive behind the murder was not clear.
“We have alerted all our police teams to nab the culprit,” a top police official said.
Eyewitnesses said they were scared when the murder occurred at around 1015 hours. “We heard bullet sounds and ran outside towards the escalator where Sharma’s body was lying in a pool of blood,” said a worker in the Parsvnath Eleganza Mall.
This is the third murder in Dehradun city in 11 days. Arjun Sharma the owner of a gas agency was shot dead near the Tibetan Market in the broad daylight on Wednesday. Five persons including the mother of Arjun Sharma have been arrested in the murder case.
Earlier, Gunjan Shrivastav (23) was hacked to death in Machchhi Bazar on Feb 2.
Interestingly, all the three murders occurred between 10:00 and 10:30 AM in a short span of 11 days in Dehradun city.
In a late evening development, Dehradun SSP Ajai Singh was removed from his post in the wake of a spate of murders in the district. Pramendra Singh Dobal has been appointed new SSP Dehradun.