No leads in road rage death
NEW DELHI : The Delhi Police are looking for a white Eeco van with ‘Alisha’ and ‘Gujar’ written on it in connection with the murder of 44-year-old property dealer Vinod Mehra, who was killed allegedly by four men early Tuesday morning in case of road rage.
Investigators said the suspects were travelling in the van. Their identities, however, could not be established even 40 hours after the crime that took place around 2.30 am on Bhalswa Dairy flyover. Police will approach the transport department to provide them a list of white Eeco vans registered in the city.
Investigators said the van was captured in three CCTV cameras installed at different locations between Alipur and Burari traffic signal on GT Karnal road. They have also got the last four digits of the van’s registration number, but are not sure whether the number plate was genuine or fake. All these clues were shared with the police by Mehra’s nephew Kunal, the sole eyewitness of the crime.
Mehra, a Congress worker, and Kunal were returning to their Geeta Colony home in their Wagon R car after attending a wedding in Alipur. On the way, a white Eeco van grazed past their car. Mehra rolled down his car’s window and asked the driver to be careful and drove on.
Four occupants of the van, however, chased Mehra’s car for more than two kilometers on GT Karnal Road and intercepted it on Bhalswa Dairy flyway. Two men stepped out and forced Mehra to come out. An argument broke out between them. A third man came out of the van and shot Mehra in the chest from a close range. He was declared brought dead at Sant Parmanand Hospital.
Though the circumstantial facts suggested that Mehra was killed in a ‘road rage’ case, the police have not ruled out other motives, including personal enmity, family dispute or business rivalry. Investigators suspect that the altercation between Mehra and the suspects may have started earlier at a wedding from which Mehra was returning.
“One of the teams was sent to analyse CCTV cameras of the banquet hall where Mehra and Kunal had attended the wedding. We want to know if the suspects were there or not,” said a police officer involved in the probe.
Aslam Khan, deputy commissioner of police (northwest), said 10 teams comprising 85 police personnel were formed to probe the case.
On Wednesday, Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee president Ajay Maken, former Congress MLA AK Walia and other party workers met Delhi Police commissioner Amulya Patnaik at the police headquarters and sought justice for Mehra. The party leaders demanded police protection for Kunal and not to call him to the police station as he was the only eyewitness in the murder case. Mehra’s father Mangat Ram, his brother Pramod, and Kunal were also present in the meeting. NEW DELHI: Classes did not take place at the Delhi university and its constituent colleges on Wednesday as the institution’s Teachers Association (DUTA) had called for a strike against the “retrograde recommendations of the seventh pay commission.”
This was the second consecutive day of strike, as teachers took to the streets on Tuesday demanding regularisation of adhoc teachers after many such teachers did not figure in the list of permanent appointments made at law faculty.
Their main contention with the 7th pay commission is that it asks central universities to generate 30% of the funds on their own, and they have called for its total roll back.