The man accused of raping of two nursery school girls at Badlapur, near Mumbai, died after he shot a police officer and was injured in retaliatory firing. Sources said Akshay Shinde had snatched the weapon from a police constable and opened fire on one of the officers, injuring him.Akshay Shinde was an attendant at the school in Thane and allegedly raped  the girls inside the school toilet. He was arrested on August 17 — five days after the children reported the assaults to their parents. Coming on the heels of the horrific rape-murder of a young doctor at a Kolkata hopsital, the incident had led to massive protests in the town. Thousands had blocked railway lines for hours and had to be forcibly removed by the police.The Bombay High Court, which had taken up the case on its own, had sharply criticised the police investigation, especially pointing its deviation from rules in the questioning of the children. “The mandate of the law is not followed by Badlapur police,” the judges had said. “They attempted to record the victim girl’s statements at the police station. There is complete non-compliance with the mandate. Asking the victim and her parents to come to the police station for a statement recording is completely insensitive and against the law,” they said The government later formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by senior IPS officer Arti Singh to probe the sexual assault case.