In a suspected case of robbery, unidentified men gunned down a 60-year-old cloth merchant in a gated residential colony in North-West Delhi’s Adarsh Nagar while he was returning home on a scooty after closing shop on Friday night.
Immediately after the murder, the alleged killers also opened fire on a private firm employee in a car, who happened to be behind the scooty.
Lucky escape
The 30-year-old man, Sidharth Jain, was temporarily blinded as glass shreds from the car’s windshield entered his eyes, but he had a lucky escape as the bullet missed him.
The assailants made away with a hand bag belonging to the deceased, Vijay Kumar Vadhwa.
His son, Ajay, claimed his father never carried money back home after work.
“The bag only contained a bunch of keys, a torch and some identity proofs,” said Ajay.
With this piece of information, the police are probing even other motives such as personal enmity or even road rage. The police are questioning several persons in this connection, but are yet to identify the killers at the time of filing this report.
“The suspects were captured by a CCTV camera, but the footage is not clear. Since the bag did not carry any money, at this stage we cannot comment on the motive behind the murder,” said Amrutha Guguloth, Additional DCP (North-West).
Same route
Mr. Kumar lived with his wife, son and daughter-in-law in Adarsh Nagar’s Keval Park area. He owned a garments shop in the Jahangirpuri area for the last two decades.
His son Ajay had been helping him in the business for the past few years. His daughter, Jyothi, is married and lives with her husband, but was on a visit to her parents’ home.
“I had left for home around 8 p.m. My father shut the shop sometime later and left at 9.30 p.m. He had been taking the same route from work to home for the last 10 years, but he never faced any problem,” said Ajay.
As Mr. Kumar rode into the gated colony of Majlis Park, barely 500 meters from his home, at least two men on a motorcycle suddenly intercepted him before showering him with bullets.
He is believed to have died on the spot.
Reasons unknown
As to why they shot at Sidharth, who was returning home after work, is still unclear.
Sidharth’s father V.K. Jain said everything happened too quickly for his son to even attempt saving the victim’s life.
The glass shreds entering his eyes meant he was unable to clearly see the suspects.
“My son just happened to be on the spot at that time. Maybe they wanted to scare him or wanted him out of their way,” said the father.
Sidharth required treatment, but his eyes escaped any serious damage.
Just after the murder, the alleged killers opened fire at a
30-year-old man in a car behind the scooty
