The police said the victim, Kartik Baggan, 23, and his friend Mohan were on a two-wheeler when two bike-borne men shot them from behind. (Express Photo)
In a suspected gang war fallout, a local miscreant was shot dead by two bike-borne assailants at ICICI Bank Chowk in Sunder Nagar area of Ludhiana on Saturday.
The police said the victim, Kartik Baggan, 23, and his friend Mohan were on a two-wheeler when two bike-borne men shot them from behind. Mohan, who was riding the two-wheeler, received a bullet injury in his back, and he lost control of the vehicle. As both of them fell down, the assailants shot Baggan at least five times, including in the chest, and he died on the spot. Mohan is undergoing treatment at Christian Medical College and Hospital (CMCH).
Baggan was booked in at least four previous criminal cases, including two for attempt to murder, said Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (North) Devinder Chaudhary. The officer said that it was being investigated whether the incident was a fallout of an inter-gang rivalry or some other personal enmity.
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After the incident, a rival group by the name of ‘Gopi Ghanshampura gang’ allegedly took responsibility for the murder on social media. In a purported social media post uploaded by one Vikas, they wrote: “We (Donny Bal, Mohabbat Randhawa, Amar Khabbe, Prabh Dasuwal and Kaushal Chaudhary) take the responsibility for the murder of Kartik Baggan. We killed him as he used to keep enmity with our dear brothers and used to abuse them on phone. Whosoever will go against our brothers will meet same fate and their death is the only solution. Whosoever will do so, no matter sitting in which country, he will get the same result soon.”
A First Information Report for Baggan’s murder under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Arms Act has been registered at Daresi police station.
Sub-inspector Gurmeet Singh, Station House Officer, Daresi police station, said that the social media post was being verified. “We are verifying if it is authentic or a trick to mislead the probe,” he added.
ADCP Chaudhary said that the family of the deceased has named three suspects, including Tony, Gagan, and Shubham Arora alias Mota.
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The police said that the murder can also be the fallout of an old rivalry between the Puneet Bains and Shubham Arora alias Mota gangs. Baggan was a part of Bains’s group, and on June 25, 2022, four men on two bikes had opened fire at Baggan on Ludhiana’s Benjamin Road. The police had then arrested three members of the Shubham Mota gang. Shubham Arora is a former Youth Congress leader.
Divya Goyal is a Principal Correspondent with The Indian Express, based in Punjab.
Her interest lies in exploring both news and feature stories, with an effort to reflect human interest at the heart of each piece. She writes on gender issues, education, politics, Sikh diaspora, heritage, the Partition among other subjects. She has also extensively covered issues of minority communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan. She also explores the legacy of India's partition and distinct stories from both West and East Punjab.
She is a gold medalist from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Delhi, the most revered government institute for media studies in India, from where she pursued English Journalism (Print). Her research work on “Role of micro-blogging platform Twitter in content generation in newspapers” had won accolades at IIMC.
She had started her career in print journalism with Hindustan Times before switching to The Indian Express in 2012.
Her investigative report in 2019 on gender disparity while treating women drug addicts in Punjab won her the Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity in 2020. She won another Laadli for her ground report on the struggle of two girls who ride a boat to reach their school in the border village of Punjab.
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