Man found dead in car with bullet injury in chest

AFZAL, WHOSE EATERY WAS DEMOLISHED BY SDMC LAST YEAR, WAS UNDER STRESS AFTER HE WAS BURDENED WITH HUGE DEBT

A 37-year-old eatery owner was found dead with a gunshot injury in his chest inside an SUV that was parked near the Holy Family hospital in south Delhi’s Jamia Nagar on Monday afternoon.

A pistol was found lying inside the Mahindra XUV that belonged to the man, identified as Mohammad Afzal.

Police said they suspected it a case of suicide, even as they were probing the incident from other angles as well. Afzal’s family, on the other hand, alleged that he was murdered. No case was registered till the filing of this news report.

A police officer said that Afzal owned an eatery in south Delhi’s New Friends Colony. However, the shop was razed during a south MCD demolition drive around a year ago. Afzal was under stress and had been running under huge debt since his business was hit by the demolition drive, the officer said.

The incident came to light around 4.30 pm, when some passersby found a black XUV parked at the roadside near the hospital with its ignition switched on and the speakers turned on full volume. The passersby saw a man seated on the driver’s seat unconscious and with blood on his clothes. One of them called the police control room and informed about the incident.

A police team arrived and the man was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead on admission. A bullet wound was found on one side of his chest. The deceased was identified as Mohammad Afzal, a resident of Jamia Nagar, the officer said.

Some locals told police that the SUV was parked there around 11.30 am and Afzal was seated in the car throughout. However, nobody had heard any gunshot sound or seen anybody firing at Afzal. A pistol was found lying near the gear handle.

“Our investigations are on and at this moment, we have not ruled out any possibility. It could be a case of homicide or a suicide. A crime and forensic team would also study the trajectory of the bullet to determine the nature of the mishap,” said Romil Baaniya, deputy commissioner of police (south-east).

Afzal’s family members told police that he had left home on Sunday after lunch, but did not return home. They were already looking for him when he did not return home in the morning and was not responding to their phone calls.

The family claimed that Afzal could not have killed himself as he did not own a pistol and was not under stress.

Senior police officer said they were scanning CCTV camera footage of the locality for some clues in the matter.

If a rowdy passenger causes a delay of up to an hour, he will have to pay a penalty of ~5 lakh. For delays between one and two hours, the fine is ~10 lakh; and ~15 lakh for beyond two hours.

An internal communication of the airline says such incidents should be prevented as these affect the crew’s morale.

“The proposal from the commercial department has been forwarded to the legal team. After the legal opinion, we will notify it. In between, we hope the definition of unruly passengers will be out. Otherwise, we will define it,” an Air India official said on Monday.

The fine could be symbolic, though.

“Even a roadside hotel has a board saying ‘right to admission reserved’. Air India, thus, must have a procedure for handling unruly passengers. Further, recent incidents have revealed that unruly behaviour does not require any provocation,” the proposal says.

Hundreds of flyers — mostly drunk, petulant or arrogant — have been grounded, blacklisted, arrested, fined and imprisoned for their aggressive behaviour since aviation became an accessible and favoured mode of transport around the world.

Last December, a Citibank vice-president and his girlfriend were arrested in America for fighting with the flight crew and fellow passengers.

Back home, a police complaint was lodged against Gaikwad, the Sena MP for Osmanabad, who had bragged before television camera that he hit the Air India employee with his slippers 25 times.

Air India retaliated by blocking seven attempts he made to book a ticket, changing the spelling of his surname and using prefixes such as Prof. He was forced to travel by train.

All six airlines cited passenger safety as a reason for banning him from flying.

Gaikwad didn’t face any police action. Instead, Air India lifted the travel ban as the central government intervened. He expressed regret for the incident, but did not apologise.

The Shiv Sena, an ally of the ruling BJP at the Centre and Maharashtra, held him clean and threatened to stop all flights from Mumbai and skip a meeting of the NDA if the ban was not revoked. Also, Sena parliamentarians created a ruckus in Parliament. police Rahul Prakash said they were raiding various places to nab the six people named by Khan, but added that they will only be detained for interrogation.

“We will arrest them only after we are sure that they were involved in the crime,” he told HT.

Yadav, meanwhile, is struggling to recover from his narrow escape. The assault has left him wounded in the ear and in penury.

Following the attack, the police have seized the truck which he had bought with a bank loan of ~4.5 lakh. He is without a livelihood without the truck that was damaged by the assailants, but still has to pay a monthly instalment of ~16,500 to the bank.

Having spent a few days at a friend’s place in Odisha, Yadav has returned to his Loharwada village to explore options of getting back the truck. “I will go to the Rajasthan high court and demand compensation as it will take more than a lakh to repair the truck,” Birdu Ram Saini, his lawyer, said.

Rajasthan has a minister dedicated for the welfare of cows and emboldened gau rakshaks in the state routinely hit the headlines for their alleged high-handedness. Last month, vigilantes raided a Jaipur hotel for reportedly serving beef. The restaurant owner denied the charge, but his hotel was shut down by the municipal authorities and several staff members were arrested.

Global pharmaceutical firms have struggled to persuade the Indian government to stop more local companies from producing new varieties of cheap generic drugs still on-patent.

India already has schemes that provide free, generic drugs to millions of its poor from staterun hospitals, and some states such as Delhi have made their use mandatory. Many experts question the quality of these copycat versions.

Pitching for affordable healthcare, Modi said his government had forced drugs and medical equipment-makers lower prices.

“Every day I do something in Delhi that makes someone or the other angry with me,” he said, adding he called heart stentmakers and asked them to cut prices.

“I told them those for ~40,000 should be given for ~6-7000 and a ~1.5-lakh stent for ~20,000….You can’t imagine how much the drug makers are angry with me.”

Doctors appeared to welcome Modi’s announcement, but some expressed concern over access to these drugs.

“It is a good thing and will benefit patients a lot as they will be getting life-saving drugs at much cheaper rates,” says Dr KK Talwar, former director, PGI Chandigarh and head of cardiology at Max Healthcare.

The Medical Council of India (MCI), the apex body that supervises medical education in the country, has already recommended doctors prescribe generic drugs.

“It is not as if we don’t prescribe generic drugs… but currently accessibility and quality of these drugs is an issue.”