Gujarat reports mob violence, 5 deaths in two separate incidents within 12 hours

Officers in uniform and plainclothes from the local police station, crime branch, and the traffic police department thronged the area. Residents looked on as they sent the body to V S General Hospital for a post-mortem around two hours after the tragedy, which occurred around 10.30 pm on Tuesday.

By 12.30 am on Wednesday, while the police videographer was working his way around the vehicle, police staff were being deployed to search the area near the main roads more than 500 metres in either direction for signs of CCTV cameras that could fetch them some clue about the incident, which left 44-year-old Kaushik Jagdish Chauhan, the driver of the Ertiga SUV with a yellow registration plate, dead, his body convulsed in the middle of the residential area.

Less than 12 hours later, around 220 km to the west, a violent crowd in Rajkot severely thrashed 37-year-old Sushipalsinh Dilubha Rana, the driver of a city bus, after he mowed down several vehicles at a traffic signal at Indira Circle, leading to the death of four persons and injuring four others at 9.50 am on Wednesday.

The Rajkot City Police had to resort to lathi charge to disperse the crowd, which had started pelting stones at the bus, dragged Rana out of the vehicle and begun beating him indiscriminately. The driver, and three others injured persons are currently undergoing treatment, the police said.

While Vejalpur police in Ahmedabad city filed a “sensitive” FIR against unknown persons responsible for the death of Chauhan, the taxi driver; Gandhigram police in Rajkot city booked bus driver Rana for culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

In Ahmedabad, the police had also detained eight people by Wednesday morning and were questioning. Speaking to The Indian Express, PI R M Chauhan of Vejalpur police station in Ahmedabad said, “The post-mortem just got over and we are waiting for the results to know the exact cause of death (of the driver). A toxicology report is awaited. We have detained eight people and are questioning them.”

On the sequence of events, the officer said, “The taxi driver drove his car down Shyamal Bridge towards Vejalpur and there, he appears to have hit a Bullet bike and then driven away from the spot. Several people followed him on multiple vehicles. CCTV footage along the route shows Chauhan driving the vehicle erratically and hitting at least two to three more vehicles, including a Honda Activa and an autorickshaw while trying to evade those pursuing him. In his attempt to evade them, Chauhan drove his car into the small bylanes in Azim Park near Ayesha Masjid and the people on bikes are seen following him. We are trying to find out what happened after that.”

In the Rajkot incident, the deceased have been identified as Kiran Chandresh Kakkad (56), Raju Manu Gida (35), Sangeeta Dhanraj Chaudhary (40), and Chinmay alias Lalo Harshad Bhatt (25). Gida was a municipal corporation employee. People who sustained injuries in the incident were Vishal Rajesh Makwana (28), Suresh Dharmesh Raval (42), Sonia Ajay Rajbar (17) and Virajba Mahaveersinh Khachhar (7).

Speaking about the tragedy at Indira Circle signal, Zone-2 DCP Jagdish Bangarwa told The Indian Express, “Four people lost their lives and four were injured in the incident at Indira circle. We checked the vehicle but it is mechanically fit and the brakes and all are in working condition. So prima facie, it looks like the driver lost control. We have booked him under Section 105 of the BNS for culpable homicide not amounting to murder, based on the complaint filed by a relative of deceased Raju Gida. We have also collected the driver’s blood samples to check if he was under the influence of alcohol.”

Further investigation in both the cases were underway.