Ten days after liquor baron Ponty Chadha and his younger brother Hardeep were killed in a shootout, the police on Tuesday once again tried to establish the sequence of events leading up to the murders at the Chhatarpur farmhouse.
The police were accompanied by a team of experts from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory. This was the first reconstruction since Delhi Police Crime Branch took over the case.
Even as the ballistic report is awaited, investigations so far have revealed that the total number of bullets fired during the shootout was close to 15, according to a police source. This does not include the three bullets allegedly fired by Ponty’s men during their attempt to drive out Hardeep’s staff from the farmhouse.
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“We will collate the findings of the ballistic report, the post-mortem reports and other evidence available to ascertain what happened at the farmhouse,” said a senior police officer.
Investigators also said that statements of sacked Uttarakhand State MinoritiesCommission chairman Sukhdev Singh Namdhari and his personal security officers were not in harmony. Among other discrepancies, the versions of Namdhari and his men differ on how the two firearms seized from Namdhari’s Uttarakhand residence reached there. The police are also trying to ascertain how one of Hardeep’s firearms, a .32 mm pistol, was broken.
The families of the two deceased have not been questioned so far, but the police did not rule out their possible confrontation with Namdhari.
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Several raids were conducted at various locations in Delhi, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh to look for Namdhari’s driver and two uncles who are under the scanner in the light of some fresh evidence, said the police. The police, however, denied that they were looking for Namdhari’s son.