‘Silent’ Pandey fusses over attire in court

NEW DELHI: His face expressionless, Ashish Pandey — accused of brandishing a gun at a couple on the premises of a five-star hotel in the city on Sunday — kept looking at the judge for almost all of 40 minutes while his case was being in Patiala House Courts on Thursday afternoon. Contrary to the behaviour seen in the video of Sunday’s incident, he stayed silent inside the courtroom even as his lawyers argued against police’s request of keeping him in custody for four days.

But as soon as the judge declared that Pandey will be kept in police custody for only a day, he smiled and went on to tuck in his white shirt into the dark pants he was wearing. Within moments though, one of his lawyers whispered something into his ears and he pulled out his shirt and straightened the creases.

Besides his brazen act of brandishing a pistol during a quarrel with a couple at a five-star hotel on Sunday, what had left many social media users amused — after the video of the incident went viral — was the pair of pink pants he was wearing at the time of the crime. On Thursday, Pandey — all of 5 foot and 6 inches with neat hair — seemed conscious about his attire.

After being on the run for four days after the crime, Pandey had landed at the city court around 11am on Thursday. Although a Delhi Police team was present at the court premises, they did not make any attempt to arrest him.

Instead, police argued that they needed to keep him in custody for four days as they needed time to recover his pistol and the BMW. But Pandey’s lawyers argued that even a visit to his hometown Lucknow could be done in a day. “Police have a hi-tech system. They are capable of getting any work over the wireless system,” a lawyer argued.

At one point, one of his other lawyers even said Pandey’s arrest was unnecessary and that four-day police custody would deny him the opportunity to celebrate Dussehra with his family. “The police case happened only because of the media hype and his father’s status as a politician,” the lawyer said.

But after the hearing ended with the magistrate asking him to be present in court at 1.15pm on Friday afternoon, the police team tried to whisk him away through the backdoor but were not able to escape the news cameras waiting for him. But when police finally managed to get him inside their sedan, he was sandwiched between four policemen.

“While on the run, his movement was limited to Lucknow and eastern UP,” said DCP (southwest) Devender Arya, adding that he has been courteous in custody.