‘He asked why he was being beaten… accused grew angry, shot him’: Kin of 14-year-old killed by CISF man

“The history of the weapon reveals that the accused frequently bought bullets in batches of 20 to 40. The last purchase he made was of a batch of 20 bullets in his hometown Etawah in Uttar Pradesh before coming to Delhi. We are verifying what possible use he could have had for so many bullets and a private gun,” a senior police officer said.

Fired to celebrate, claims CISF constable

The CISF man, a head constable posted in Kanpur, is learnt to have claimed that he had fired in the air in celebration, and was not aware that the bullet had hit the boy. “However, the bullet hit the boy in the head, which would be an unusual trajectory if the shot was indeed fired in the air,” the police officer said.

The officer said that pieces of paper that looked like 500-rupee notes were found at the spot.

“My elder son told me that Sahil had said something to the CISF man about him throwing fake notes instead of real money. In response, he slapped my son and then shot him,” Sahil’s mother, Nisha, told The Indian Express on Thursday.

The father of the 14-year-old boy at their home on Thursday. (Express photo by Pragynesh)

Bystanders present at the spot near a community centre at the DDA Market in Mansarovar Park have reported witnessing Sahil being slapped several times by the accused.

Tabrez Alam, Sahil’s brother-in-law, had told The Indian Express earlier that the accused was infuriated after Sahil asked him why he was being beaten. “His (Sahil’s) friend told us that Sahil had asked the man what his fault was. The man got so angry at Sahil talking back to him that he pulled out a gun and shot him in the head,” Tabrez said.

Sahil’s father Sirajuddin is paralytic. “I had three sons. Three months back, my husband got paralysed. Though both my elder son and Sahil started working, only Sahil gave any money for his father’s recovery,” Nisha told The Indian Express on Thursday.

The family belongs to UP and lives in a small rented home in Gali Number 13 of Modern Colony in Shahdara. It is a low, one-room structure converted into a two-storey space by a narrow, makeshift staircase carved out of a wall. The structure is adjacent to an empty plot filled with plastic bags, household waste, and animal dung. The family pays Rs 4,000 every month for it.

Sahil earned Rs 6,000 every month from his job at a grocery store, Nisha said. He had tried his hand as a loader at a transport company — it paid better, but the weights he had to lift were too heavy. “That was a man’s job. How could a boy have done it?” Nisha said.

Nisha said she had no money to buy medicines for Sirajuddin, who lay on a broken cot on Thursday afternoon. She was making do with mustard oil massages for him, she said.

“Jo dene wala tha woh chala gaya. (The person who gave us money is no more) I will have to think about food before medicines,” she said.