Man who attacked Delhi CM was guided by a dog in a dream: Police chargesheet

He had allegedly “seen many videos on Facebook” of people protesting in Delhi on dog-related issues, and holding “the Chief Minister of Delhi, Rekha Gupta, responsible”, according to the chargesheet.

Sakariya, who belongs to Rajkot, attacked the Chief Minister at a Jan Sunwai (public hearing) on August 20, and was arrested at the spot. His mother Bhanu Khimji Sakariya told reporters in Rajkot at the time that her son was a dog lover who had “mental issues” and was upset over the Supreme Court’s August 11 direction to authorities in the NCR region to pick up all stray dogs and put them permanently in shelters.

“His mind is like that. He will hit anyone. He has hit me and his wife as well. He has mental [issues] but is not on any medication. He got so angry upon learning about the dog issue that he almost broke the bed, hitting it in anger,” the mother had said.

The 429-page chargesheet filed by the Delhi Police last month before Judicial Magistrate First Class Gaurav Goyal at the Tis Hazari court contains Sakariya’s statement to the investigating officer.

“One night I saw a dog in my temple [where many stray dogs live] in a dream, standing next to the Shivling, telling me that dogs in Delhi were suffering a lot,” the chargesheet records. He then told his wife and a friend called Bapu: “I will go to Delhi and sit on a hunger strike, and if anyone stops me the way they did last time, I will kill them, no matter who they are.”

He had then travelled to Ujjain to seek “Mahakal’s command” on whether he should go to Delhi. “I made two slips, on one I wrote ‘yes’ and on the other ‘no’. I offered both slips before Mahakal and picked one. When I opened it, it said ‘yes’, which for me was Mahakal’s order that I should go to Delhi and sit on a hunger strike,” he said in his statement, according to the chargesheet.

Sakariya’s wife refused to give him money to travel to Delhi, but his friend and co-accused Tahseen Raza transferred Rs 2,000 to him online, says the chargesheet.

Sakariya told police that he put in a request to meet the CM, and received a Jan Sunwai slip. He took the metro to Kashmiri Gate, where he picked a fruit-cutting knife off a fruit vendor’s cart, and got himself a bed at the Delhi Gujarati Samaj Dharamshala. In the morning of August 20, after seeing the police deployment for the CM’s meeting, he threw the knife in an empty plot nearby and entered Jan Sunwai Sadan.

Special Public Prosecutor Pradeep Rana told the court that police had uncovered a “deep-rooted conspiracy” that “unequivocally demonstrates the act was pre-planned and pre-meditated”. According to Rana, the probe revealed that the accused had initially attempted to “carry out some mischief” inside the Supreme Court premises but abandoned the plan after noticing heightened security.

“Around 8.45 am, it was the turn of the accused Rajeshbhai. He told [the] Chief Minister…that imposing a ban on dogs in Delhi was wrong, and…“Now you will face the consequences.” …He slapped her hard, grabbed her hair, pulled her down to the ground, and…pressed her neck with both hands with full force, repeatedly shouting that he would not let her live,” says the chargesheet.

“…If the accused had choked Smt. Rekha Gupta for a few seconds more, and if the PSOs had not acted swiftly, she could have been killed,” it says.

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