A drunken argument over reservation and the caste system led to two persons being killed in Najafgarh area on Friday night.
A drunken argument over reservation and the caste system led to two persons being killed in Najafgarh area on Friday night.
Two ex-servicemen working as private security officers (PSOs) of property dealers and financiers associated with gangster-turned-politician Krishan Pehalwan were shot dead by another PSO and his aides at Pehalwan’s farmhouse-cum-office late Friday night.
The deceased have been identified as Ashok Kumar and Fauji, both formerly with the BSF. They worked as PSOs for two different property dealers in southwest Delhi. The two belonged to Etah in Uttar Pradesh and were of a different caste from that of the accused. The two were guests at a party last night at Pehalwan’s farmhouse, where the former councillor’s PSO lives, said a senior police official. All guests at the party were drunk when a heated argument broke out among them, during which one Joginder, also a PSO, pulled out a gun and allegedly fired at Kumar and Fauji.
“At 11.40 pm the police received a call from a private hospital informing them that two persons with bullet injuries were brought there. While one was dead, the other was in a critical state then,” DCP (Southwest) R.A. Sanjeev said, adding that the second man succumbed to his injury at the hospital.
A police team was rushed there and during the initial phase of the investigation it appeared that both victims worked as PSOs for Pehalwan. Further investigation revealed their identities and that of the property dealers they worked for.
When people were questioned, the sequence of events became clear and the accused, Joginder, from Haryana’s Bahadurgarh, was arrested on Saturday afternoon following raids at his possible hideouts in Delhi-NCR, the police added.
At least five bullets were fired by Joginder and his four aides at the two PSOs, all heavily drunk, during the party organised in the first-floor rooms of Pehalwan’s farmhouse. Pehalwan, elder brother of former Najafgarh MLA Bharat Singh who was killed in March 2015 by a rival gang, used the rooms to house his bodyguards and guests and organise parties, said the police.
Pehalwan was taken into custody to verify if he had a role in the crime.
The police maintained that this incident had nothing to do with any gang war and Pehalwan, who was not present at the time of the incident, was not a target.
In March last year, Pehalwan’s brother Bharat Singh, a former MLA, was shot dead by assailants in the fallout of an old gang war in the area.
