Trigger-happy Delhi cops shoot two innocents dead

Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda has ordered a Central Bureau of Investigation inquiry into Monday's shoot-out in the capital, wherein the Delhi crime branch sleuths shot two businessmen dead and injured two others in a case of mistaken identity.

The order came immediately after Deve Gowda met with top bureaucrats including Home Minister Indrajit Gupta, Home Secretary Padmanabhaiah and Delhi Chief Secretary P V Jayakrishnan. The meeting also saw him replacing Delhi Police Commissioner Nikhil Kumar with T R Kakkar.

The unfortunate incident occurred on Monday afternoon at the Barakambha Road-Connaught Place intersection. The nine-member police team mistook 34-year-old Pradeep Goyal and his Haryana-based business associate Jagjit Singh for dreaded Uttar Pradesh gangster Mohammed Yaseen and accomplice.

Eyewitness say that when Goyal's cobalt-blue Maruti Esteem drew up at the traffic intersection near Connaught Place fire station, two unmarked police vehicles drew up alongside while a third swerved and halted in front. The plainclothed sleuths, led by Assistant Commissioner of Police S S Rathi and Inspector Anil Kumar, surrounded the car and sprayed bullets at the three occupants. The car was riddled with 33 bullets.

''They then opened the doors and dragged the bodies out. They were kicking the bodies to make sure they were dead, " said an eyewitness.

The sleuths, when they realised their mistake, hastily loaded the dead and the injured into a police Gypsy -- a bystander Avtar Singh had also taken a stray bullet -- and rushed them to Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital.

Police officials say that Anil Kumar was acting on a specific tip that Yaseen -- wanted for kidnapping and murdering a Panchsheel-based engineer, Saud Alam last year -- would be in Delhi to meet a contact in Patparganj. He saw Yaseen entering a similar car as Goyal's and, with two constables, followed it to Connaught Place. On the way he contacted Rathi for reinforcement. Rathi responded immediately and joined Kumar at the shoot-out scene.

"It was a bonafide case of mistaken identity," apologised Nikhil Kumar.

But the deadmen's relatives -- who have more tales to tell about the Delhi police -- are not ready to buy that. They plan to take the police to the courts. 'They were not even ready to tell us the truth. When we reached the hospital, they wouldn't tell us why Pradeep leaves behind a young widow and a two-year-old son,' Goyal's relative Mahesh Bhatt told one reporter.

Later, he says, the police tried to misinform them. 'First they said it was the Central Bureau of Investigation who was responsible; then they said it was the Uttar Pradesh police. They even said they had shot Yaseen in Pradeep's car and that Jagjit, whom we have known for years, was actually a Haryana gangster!'