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Friday, Oct 24, 2008
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A nightmare for young couple on Delhi road

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: In an apparent case of road rage, three allegedly drunk young men gave chase to a young businessman and his wife in a car, hurled a wine bottle and glass at them, and beat them up mercilessly in the Capital’s Model Town area on Wednesday evening.

Twenty-five-year-old Rohit Dhingra fractured his left hand in the attack and also suffered injuries on his head and back.

His wife Pooja ended up with broken teeth and jaw injury.

The couple were returning home after visiting an ailing relative in Vinayak Hospital when the accused in a Maruti-800 car began chasing them and banged their vehicle against the couple’s Honda City repeatedly.

“One of them then took out a wine bottle and a glass and hurled it at my wife from the moving car. She received cuts on her jaw and began to bleed. Even before I could figure out what was happening, the three overtook my car near Nanak Piao and pulled up in front. They dragged me out, punched me, and broke my left arm,” said a thoroughly shaken Rohit on Thursday.

When the couple raised an alarm, some passers-by gathered at the spot and caught hold of two of the accused. “I made a call to the police and a Police Control Room van reached the spot within a few minutes. We handed over two men to the police, but one managed to give the police the slip,” said Rohit, a Vijay Nagar resident who owns a plastic pipes shop in Bhajanpura.

Accused gets bail

One of the accused, Jasveer Singh, was arrested and later let off on bail.

Accusing the police of trying to hush up the matter, the businessman said the cops initially mounted pressure on him to reach a compromise. “The police were reluctant to register a case and pressurised me to reach an agreement with the accused. The case was registered on Thursday afternoon, more than 20 hours after the incident,” said Rohit.

While not ruling out the possibility of road rage, the police also suspect that it could be a case of mistaken identity. “One of the accused, Jasveer, owns a confectionary shop near Vinayak Hospital and an unidentified man in a black car has been abusing his father for the past couple of months. Rohit also owns a black car and had been visiting his ailing brother-in-law in the hospital for over a week. When Rohit left the hospital in his car on Wednesday night, the accused perhaps mistook him for the young man who had been abusing his father and beat him up,” said a police officer.

A case has been registered under Section 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 341 (wrongful restraint) of the India Penal Code and sections of the Motor Vehicles Act.

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