NEW DELHI: An unknown gunman shot dead Mohammad Sharif, an accused linked to the 2008 CRPF camp attack, on Tuesday. Sharif was killed in Rampur, UP with bystanders alleging he was shot 16 times. The police have initiated a manhunt for the shooter/s.Seven CRPF personnel and a rickshaw puller were killed in a pre-dawn terror attack, plotted by Lashkar-e-Taiba, on the CRPF Group Centre in Rampur on the night of December 31, 2007-Jan 1, 2008. In May 2025, unknown gunmen had killed Abu Saifullah Khalid, a key Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operative and the mastermind behind the 2006 RSS headquarters attack and multiple terror strikes, including one on a CRPF camp in Uttar Pradesh.
Sharif, who belonged to Badanpuri-Khajuria village in Rampur, went by aliases of Suhail, Sajid, Anwar and Ali, according to police records. He was lodged in Bareilly central jail and released last Nov.Arrested in the case in the aftermath of the attack, a UP court had in 2019 convicted Sharif and five others including two Pakistani nationals in the case. Four including Sharif were subsequently sentenced to death after they were found directly involved in the attack.In Oct 2025, the Allahabad High Court, however, overturned the death sentences but upheld their conviction under the Arms Act for possessing prohibited weapons, sentencing them to ten years’ rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 1 lakh each. The HC had noted procedural lapses by the police like failure to conduct a Test Identification Parade (TIP) and also found lapses in the handling of physical evidence, observing that firearms, cartridges, and grenades allegedly recovered from the scene were not securely preserved or properly traced through the chain of custody. Key witnesses who should have verified storage and transfer of evidence were not examined.