Midnight fury: Ex-soldier clubs six to death with rod
PALWAL/FARIDABAD: A 43-year-old former soldier bludgeoned six people to death with an iron rod in a late-night killing spree in Haryana’s Palwal town on Monday, police said.
The accused, Naresh Dhankar, is a sub-divisional officer (SDO) with the Haryana government’s agricultural department in Bhiwani. In 2003, he had taken voluntary retirement from the army as a lieutenant. Dhankar allegedly went about killing anyone he could find on the street in Palwal, about 60km from Delhi.
While three of his victims were watchmen, Dhankar also entered a hospital, where he allegedly killed a woman attending to her sick relative. Five of the victims were found dead within a 400-metre radius of the local police station. Locals said two dogs were also found bludgeoned to death in the area, though police could not confirm Dhankar’s involvement.
Dhankar was caught by a police team around 7.15am on Tuesday, when he was reportedly chasing his seventh victim on the street outside his in-laws’ home, barely 300 metres from where he had killed one of the victims.
Dhankar allegedly attacked the police team but suffered a brain haemorrhage when police retaliated. Referred to Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital after treatment at a Faridabad hospital, he remained unconscious at the time of going to print, police said.
Family members of Dhankar’s wife Seema alleged that he was “mentally ill” and would physi- cally and mentally abuse her. The murders were apparently triggered by a ruckus outside his in-laws’ house on Monday night.
“The serial killings happened after Seema’s family refused to allow him to enter their home around 11 pm on Monday. He left the neighbourhood while hurling abuses at his wife, but that was his usual behaviour,” said neighbour Kapil Vikal, a private firm manager who barely escaped death hours later. NEW DELHI: A day prior to the Lethpora attack, the Jammu and Kashmir police shared “specific and actionable” intelligence with senior CRPF officials about an impending attack by terror outfit Jaish-e-mohammad (JEM) operatives carrying armourpiercing bullets.
Five personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) died in the attack that went on for 36 hours in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district.
“Muneer Khan, Inspector General (Kashmir Range) of Jammu and Kashmir police shared with his counterpart in the CRPF in Srinagar, Ravideep Sahi, (details of ) the imminent attack on Lethpora,” a senior Jammu and Kashmir police official said on the condition of anonymity.
“Intel was very specific about the Lethpora camp being the target of Jaish-e-mohammad operatives and the attack was supposed to begin on December 31 at 1am. The attack actually began at 2.15am,” he added.
The official said that prior to this, India’s external intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) also shared intelligence with the CRPF that the residences of its two Inspectors General in Srinagar might by attacked by Jaish-eMohammad terrorists.