Land row: Principal among 2 shot dead
NEWDELHI: A 45-year-old principal was gunned down in a school building in outer Delhi’s Gummanhera village near Najafgarh on Monday night, and hours later, her younger brother was found dead less than 10 kilometres away in Haryana’s Jhajjar district, police said on Tuesday.
The principal’s husband, their 17-year-old son, and their pet Dalmation were shot at as well, but escaped unhurt in what investigators said appeared to be an elaborate hit job over a property dispute.
The school, Rachna Public School with nearly 500 students enrolled from Classes 1 to 10, is run by the family. Investigators said the circumstances suggested the two murders were related and were executed by the same men, and named a local, Naveen Yadav, as the key suspect based on preliminary investigations.
Shibesh Singh, deputy commissioner of police (Dwarka), said two of the three suspects in the case had been identified, but could not be traced until Tuesday evening.
“Naveen Yadav, the man who led the killers, was involved in a dispute over six bighas of land with the principal’s husband,” the officer said.
The school was operating for the last 23 years from the same building. Anita Yadav served as its principal, her husband Ashok Yadav handled the administration. Their eldest son, Tushar, is in Class 11, and two younger daughters study outside Delhi. Anita’s brother Jai Kishan managed the school’s buses. The police said Ashok also ran a property business in partnership with Naveen, but Ashok said that wasn’t correct.
“I had loaned ~1 crore to Naveen’s aunt in lieu of her six bighas. When Naveen learnt about it, he wanted me to return the land, but without the money,” Ashok said. The dispute had led to heated confrontations, and took a murderous turn on Monday, he said.