Men who claimed responsibility for ‘attack’ on Umar Khalid fail to surrender, probe continues

The Delhi Police on Friday said they are yet to catch the two men who — in a video being circulated on WhatsApp — claimed responsibility for the alleged attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University PhD scholar Umar Khalid on Monday.

In the video, the two men had said that they would surrender before police in the village of Sikh revolutionary Kartar Singh Sarabha in Punjab on Friday. However, they did not turn up at the village to surrender, police said.

According to police, teams from the Delhi Police’s special cell and their counterparts in Punjab were deployed at Sarabha’s village throughout the day as the two men had, in the video, claimed that they would reach there on August 17 noon and surrender. The two had also cautioned the police not to stop them on their way to the village otherwise they would change their route and go somewhere else. In the video, the two identified themselves as Darwesh Shahpur and Naveen Dalal and claimed that the attack on Khalid was supposed to be an “Independence Day gift” to Indians.

Khalid was allegedly attacked outside the Constitution Club of India, where he had gone to attend an event titled Khauf se Azaadi, on Monday afternoon. After the incident, some eyewitnesses claimed that they had heard a gunshot. Later, an unidentified man was caught fleeing the spot on the CCTV camera footage retrieved from the area.

Pramod Singh Kushwah, deputy commissioner of police (special cell), said police would be able to establish whether one of the two men seen in the video was the attacker only when they nab and question them.

“After identifying the two men in the video, investigators visited their respective villages in Haryana’s Bahadurgarh. However, they were not there and their families told us that they have not returned home in a long time,” Kushwah said.

However, Khalid had, on Thursday, said that one of the two men seen in the video appeared to be the one who had attacked him.

Maintaining that they are in touch with the relatives and friends of the two alleged attackers in order to track down their possible hideouts and make them join the probe, police said they are yet to ascertain the exact source through which the video was uploaded on social media.

Meanwhile, police said they are waiting for the ballistic report of the “jammed” pistol recovered from the crime spot to confirm if a bullet was indeed fire. The pistol had reportedly fallen on the road while the alleged attacker was trying to flee from the spot.

First Published: Aug 18, 2018 04:12 IST