Anuj Bidve, the 23-year-old Indian university student murdered by a white gunman in Salford, Manchester, on Boxing Day, might have simply happened to be in “the wrong place at the wrong time,” local residents suggested on Wednesday pointing out that it was a “rough” area and had witnessed several shootings in recent months.
“I don't know who told them [Bidve and his friends] to walk to Manchester at that time of the morning through that estate. Everyone knows not to walk through that estate. It's rough,” said Sheetal Patel, a local cake-maker, who happened to be driving past the area when Anuj's friends flagged her down and sought her help as he lay dying.
“Unprovoked” murder
Police too claimed that the “unprovoked” murder appeared to be motiveless but were not ruling out the possibility that it was racially motivated. Two more persons were arrested bringing the total arrests to four, all teenagers.
Ordsall Lane, where the murder took place, is barely yards from Ordsall Estate which has a history of petty gangsterism.
“Anuj's murder is the fourth major shooting incident in Ordsall in the last 14 months,” said the Manchester Evening News while one local resident said: “It is like Dodge City out there.”
The paper said it could “reveal” that Anuj was killed “after calmly being asked the time by his killer” during a “short” conversation confirming the account of a friend of Anuj's, Sonakshi Saran, that he “was killed for not answering a simple question - What's the time?” as he was busy on his mobile phone GPS checking directions to the City Centre where he and his friends were headed.
According to a report in The Times , however, Anuj was “apparently responding politely when a handgun was pulled out and a shot was fired into the side of his head.”
Details of the exchange that preceded the shooting have not been disclosed by the police but they insist that nothing racist was said.
Ms. Patel told The Guardian that the emergency services appeared to take too long to arrive.
“The response time took too long … we were thinking should we put him in a car and take him to hospital ourselves. We didn't know what we were doing. I make cakes — I don't have a clue about first aid or anything,” she said.
“We just kept on trying to keep him breathing and to make him know that we were there. There was one guy holding Anuj's head, trying to put pressure on the wound. And there was another guy who was on the phone to the police…. We all thought he was going to live.”
A postgraduate micro-electronics student at Lancaster University, Anuj was on holiday in Manchester with his friends when they were accosted by two white men, one of whom ended up killing him.
Police described it as “a fast moving investigation” and again appealed for information as local people described the murder as a “disgrace” to the city.
