Parking dispute in Capital ends in murder
An argument over parking claimed a life in Delhi in the early hours of Monday. Gaurav Sharma shot dead Pankaj Nayyar, 34, in east Delhi’s Preet Vihar after the latter tried to settle a parking dispute between two neighbours.
Nayyar had driven in from Noida after Sunday midnight, at the insistence of his elder brother Paras, 43, who had been locked in a heated argument with Sharma over a parking space.
According to police, two PCR calls were received at 2.22 am and 2.26 am, reporting a quarrel and gunshots near a residential building in Preet Vihar. A police team reached the spot and found Pankaj had been rushed by local residents to Malik Radix Health Care hospital in Nirman Vihar. Doctors declared him dead on arrival.
The roots of the dispute go back several days. Paras lives in a house in the area where Sharma occupied one of the floors as a tenant. Sharma owns two vehicles, a BMW and a Fortuner, but has been allocated parking for only one car.
The BMW was parked. The argument, which had been simmering for days, flared late Sunday night again over where the second vehicle would go.
What began as a neighbourhood disagreement over a few square feet of parking space turned into a shouting match that neither side was willing to step away from. Paras called his brother, Nayyar, from Noida for support. The arrival of reinforcement, however, did not calm things down. It made them worse.
Police allege that at this point, Sharma produced an illegal firearm and fired at Pankaj, hitting him in the chest. Pankaj collapsed on the spot. Sharma fled immediately.
Sharma’s wife has told investigators that her husband did not possess any weapon. Police are examining this claim and are probing whether the firearm was brought to the spot in advance or whether it was already in Sharma’s possession. The source of the weapon is a key thread in the investigation.
A crime team has inspected the site and is scanning CCTV footage from cameras in and around the building and the surrounding lanes to reconstruct the sequence of events and track the accused’s movement after he fled. Multiple police teams have been formed, and raids are being conducted at locations where Sharma might be hiding.
A case has been registered at Preet Vihar police station under relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Arms Act.
The victim’s family is in shock. Residents of the building and the surrounding locality said the incident has created an atmosphere of fear. The area has been cordoned off, and evidence has been collected from the scene.
For a man who drove a BMW, the inability to find a place to park a second car ended with a neighbour dead and a family destroyed. Further investigation is ongoing.
