In an apparent case of road rage, a man allegedly hit two motorcycle-borne persons with his car on Sunday night as they objected to him smoking in front of them in south Delhi, following which one of the two succumbed to injuries on Wednesday.
The accused, identified as Rohit Krishna Mahanta, was arrested on Wednesday evening from the Apollo Hospital.
Initially, the police said that they had added section 304 (punishment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder with a maximum term of life imprisonment) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) to the FIR but after conducting an investigation, the police registered a case of murder against the accused.
The accused, Mahanta, is a practising lawyer under the standing counsel of the Assam government.
Gurpreet and Maninder Singh, aged 21 and 22 respectively, had gone near AIIMS for filming a documentary on pavement dwellers in the national capital on Saturday, their families claimed.
While they were having dinner near the Safdarjung Hospital, a man came and started smoking on their faces, witnesses told police.
The duo objected to the man blowing smoke on their faces and asked him to not do so, the family members claimed, adding that the man, who was inebriated, threatened them with dire consequences.
Gurpreet and Maninder decided to leave since they did not want the issue to get escalated, they said.
However, the man followed them and hit them with his car near AIIMS. The driver also went on to hit two other vehicles - an autorickshaw and a cab.
Regarding the incident, a police officer was quoted by IANS as saying:
Rohit abused them and hurled anti-religious remarks. He also threatened to kill them. He later chased Gurpreet and Maninder in his car and rammed into their motorcycle, dragging it for more than 100 metres before hitting an auto-rickshaw and a cabPolice officer
The two were then rushed to the hospital. Gurpreet succumbed to injuries on Wednesday while the other victim is undergoing treatment at the hospital and is said to be in a critical condition, police said.
After Gurpreet's death, police have added section 302 (punishment for murder, punishable with capital punishment) instead of IPC section 304 to the FIR.
Maninder was unconscious after the incident. After he regained consciousness and narrated the sequence of events, it was thought that sections 302 and 30 could both be applied. However, we decided to include stricter charges of murder in the case.Senior police officer
Mahanta's father is a professor at one of the IITs
(With inputs from PTI and IANS)
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