Lucknow Police is under fire for the shocking incident of a patrolling cop shooting down a late night commuter. PRABHA SHANKER reports that such cold blooded activities are nothing new to this corrupt and brazen force
On a pleasant Saturday morning of September 29, morning walkers were surprised to see cops milling on an otherwise deserted stretch of Gomati Nagar Extension. ‘Crime Scene Do Not Enter’ tape had cordoned off an area of the road. They were told, a murder had taken place of a man driving an SUV near Saryu Apartments, one of the many residential high-rises that dot Lucknow’s skyline.
It was much later through television news that the residents came to know that two trigger-happy constables had shot dead a senior manager with Apple, Vivek Tiwari, who with his colleague Sana Khan was returning from a late-night official party organised on the occasion of the launch of a new Apple product.
Tiwari was dropping Khan home and had called his wife that he would be home after dropping her home in Vinay Khand.
Around 1.30 am, when two patrolling constables intercepted them near the Maqdoompur police outpost, not knowing if the two were genuine policemen or imposter criminals, Tiwari panicked and tried to speed away. Constable Prashant Chaudhary fired a bullet as his colleague constable Sandeep Kumar allegedly incited him to open fire.
The bullet fired from the service pistol hit the windscreen of Tiwari’s vehicle and pierced through his chin. As he slumped, the car went out of control and hit the constables’ bike before crashing against the wall of the underpass.
Realising their mistake, the constables fled the crime scene leaving the victim in a pool of blood. Passing truckers helped Khan take Tiwari to the Ram Manohar Lohia hospital where he was declared brought dead.
The cops, in a damage control mode, said it was unclear whether Tiwari had died due of the bullet or subsequently when the car hit the wall. Some even claimed that Tiwari had tried to run over the two cops when he was asked to stop. Only later it surfaced that constable Chaudhary had fired at the car, hitting the windscreen and after that Tiwari. The autopsy report said Tiwari had died due to excessive bleeding from the gunshot wound.
The incident sent shockwaves through Lucknow and pushed the victim’s household into doom. Tiwari’s daughters Divyanshi and Priyanshi were inconsolable and their mother Kalpana went into shock. “Do cops have the licence to kill innocents without provocation?” the family questioned, adding that if Tiwari had indeed sped away, they could have passed on the information to next the police picket to stop the SUV ahead.
“Due to our pursuance and the alacrity shown by the media in covering the incident, the cops had to step back and take action. Otherwise, they would have termed it as an encounter and somehow proved that Tiwari had a criminal past,” he said.
To force the police to take action against the killer cops, the family puts out Tiwari's body in the open grounds of their apartment building and were later joined by Lucknow University students to protest the gruesome incident and demand that the two cops be brought to the book.
Police inaction in the matter was exposed when the constable, along with his wife who is also a police person, reached the Gomati Nagar Police Station in the evening to lodge a complaint. It was only after the media reached the police station that the accused constable was detained.
Even then, cops were more interested in finding out why Tiwari and Khan were together at that late hour, obviously in a bid to give a spin to the case and justify the shooting.
Some reports suggest that the accused were drunk and had picked up a fight with Tiwari. Constables on patrol in the area are known to harass couples passing by and often extort money from them. The firing may have been the result of Tiwari refusing to pay.
As the media got after the story, Khan was allegedly put under house arrest and not allowed to meet anyone, least of all Tiwari’s wife and the media. Later, Khan told reporters that the cops had tried to stop the car and sensing danger and to avoid an altercation with the constables, ‘Vivek Sir’ had tried to speed away. That’s when the constable opened fire hitting Tiwari.
A source said that the cops initially tried to pass the incident off as a road accident. It was only after Kalpana, who had reached the crime scene, raised a hue and cry about the bullet hole in the windscreen that the police admitted to the firing.
In an FIR filed by Kalpana against constables Chaudhary and Kumar, states that her husband and his colleague were returning home around 1.30 am on Saturday when the two constables riding a bike moved towards the SUV. Constable Chaudhary approached the vehicle, took out his service pistol and put the muzzle on the windscreen. Tiwari was shot when he backed his vehicle and tried to drive away. In the process, the vehicle hit the underpass wall. She also says that some policemen, who had reached the scene, forced Khan to sign a blank paper and left.
Later in the day, constable Chaudhary’s wife Rakhi demanded that a case be lodged against Khan and Tiwari for trying to run over her husband. She, however, was not allowed an audience with the SSP and left the police station after staging a dharna for a few hours.
“We observed tyre marks. The forensic team which helped in the collection of evidence has been asked to find out the reason behind the same. We are also trying to stitch up the sequence of events leading to the shooting,” prime investigator IG Sujit Pandey told the media.
He ducked the question on whether the preliminary findings were against the constable. “The bike had a dent on the right side. The team is trying to find out if the dent was caused after it was hit by the victim’s vehicle. The team is also finding out how the victim’s vehicle had a dent on one of the doors,” he asserted.
Top cops may deny all knowledge of the errant constables’ activities, but people tell you that the two had a devil-may-care attitude and this is not the first time that the accused cop has landed in a controversy. In the past, he was pulled up for beating up a tempo driver.
Expressing grief over the incident, DGP OP Singh said no amount of apology would suffice for the loss of a precious life or heal and wounds of the devastated family. “My heart goes out for the little daughters, wife and family members of Tiwari,” he said, adding that such deviant criminal behaviour was reprehensible and deserved the strictest punishment.
“We are determined to punish and wean out such rogues in uniform. We are striving for a 360-degree reform of the UP Police. It is my request to all of you to not consider this aberration as a reflection of what we truly stand for. I solicit your forgiveness, best wishes and co-operation in the journey of reformation ahead,” he said.
What is puzzling the ballistic experts is the angle at which the bullet was fired and the position Tiwari was sitting when the shot was fired. The bullet pierced through his chin and got lodged in the spinal cord. “If the shot was fired from the service pistol on the windscreen there would have been friction after the collision with the windscreen and thus its speed would have slowed. We are trying to find out the speed and force at which it hit the victim’s chin,” a source said. Constable Chaudhary and Khan will be questioned for further details.
“Their statement is important. Khan has stated in her complaint that she heard a gunshot and later found Tiwari in a pool of blood. We will ask her how far the constable was standing when the victim was attacked. Also, Chaudhary, who is insisting that he opened fire in self-defence, will be asked how far he was standing from the victim’s vehicle when he opened fire,” the source said.
“We will prefer a scientific analysis of the sequence which culminated in the unfortunate incident. The evidence collected by the SIT team will help us reach a logical end in the case,” Pandey said.