On Thursday afternoon, most residents of the lane where the video was shot maintained that they did not hear any gunshot or see Walia being taken to the hospital. (Express photo)
Sachin Walia, the brother of Bheem Army Saharanpur district chief Kamal Walia, was cremated in Ramnagar Thursday, 24 hours after he was shot. The autopsy report points towards a shot being fired from a “very close range”. With no eyewitnesses coming forward, no arrests have been made yet, the police said.
The victim’s family, however, claimed that it was the Bheem Army district chief Kamal Walia who might have been the target of the bike-borne assailants.
Narrating what happened in the locality Wednesday morning before his brother was shot dead, Kamal Walia told The Indian Express, “Two officers from the police intelligence unit had come to our house, and my brother had gone to see them off. After that, he was going towards a cell phone recharge shop when the shot was fired. Some people from the village took him to the hospital and informed me about the incident. Before he could reach the hospital, he succumbed to the injury.”
Police, on the other hand, have raised concerns about the circumstances surrounding the incident. On Wednesday, a video of a lane with bloodstains in Ramnagar, where the victim was allegedly shot, was circulated. The video shows some locals cleaning the stretch with water. “An FIR as per the family’s complaint has been filed against four persons under IPC Section 302 (murder) and Sections of the SC/ST Act. However, neither the complainant nor local residents know the exact scene of crime. The post-mortem report states that there is… blackening near the gunshot injury. A 0.315 mm bore bullet has been used and the weapon is likely to be a country-made pistol. The bullet has entered from his mouth cavity to his skull. From the post-mortem report, it is clear that the shot was fired from a very close range,” said Prabal Pratap Singh, SP City, Saharanpur.
On Thursday afternoon, most residents of the lane where the video was shot maintained that they did not hear any gunshot or see Walia being taken to the hospital. At least five residents and one shopkeeper maintained that they were not present in the area. However, a man, on conditions of anonymity, said that on Wednesday morning he was sitting near a closed shop on the main Ramnagar Road.
“I did not hear any gunshot, but around 11.30 am, a group of nearly 50 people including some policemen passed by. Around half an hour later, Sachin Walia was taken to the hospital from here. The earlier group comprised Thakurs who took out a small procession on Maharana Pratap Jayanti Diwas,” the man said.
Following a night-long vigil at the district hospital in Saharanpur, Walia’s body was sent for autopsy only around 3.30 am on Thursday, and brought to his residence eight hours later. Draped with a blue cloth, the body was cremated amid heavy security presence.