The Uttar Pradesh police on March 21 arrested Javed, the co-accused in the double murder in which his brother Sajid had allegedly killed two minor boys in Budaun a couple of days back.
The police said that Javed claimed to have no involvement in the crime and informed that Sajid had mental illness since childhood, which gradually developed into anger issues. Soon after the deaths came to light, Sajid was gunned down in a police encounter.
The double murder led to communal tensions in the area as a mob gutted shops belonging to the Muslim community. A heavy police force was deployed in the area to maintain law and order.
Meanwhile, the post-mortem reports of the minor brothers revealed that the children were ruthlessly murdered. Over a dozen wounds were found on the bodies of the two children, including deep stab injuries on the legs, neck and chest.
Before getting arrested, Javed had released a viral video on social media in which he was seen requesting people to hand him over to police and that he is innocent. In the video, he shared that he had first gone to Delhi and later reached Bareilly where he expressed his wish to surrender.
“...I was not involved in the incident in any way...please hand me to the police,” Javed said in the video, while adding that they were on cordial terms with the victim’s family.
“Even I am unable to understand what actually went wrong,” Javed said.
Sharing details about Javed’s arrest, Budaun senior superintendent of police (SSP) Alok Priyadarshi said the police received information about his surrender from Bareilly and a team was sent to bring him to Budaun where he was interrogated for several hours.
“During interrogation, he claimed innocence and informed that Sajid had mental issues since childhood for which the family used to take him to a dargah for several years. He also said that there were times that Sajid was asked to stay in the dargah for many days for the treatment. He said that Sajid’s illness had turned into anger issues and there were occasions that he used to become uncontrollably angry,” the SSP said.
Mr. Priyardarshi further said that Javed had said that Sajid had once tried to harm himself owing to the mental illness.
He added that the police, during investigation, managed to find the shop from where the murder weapon, the knife, was purchased.
When asked if Sajid had purchased a knife from where he got the gun, which he had allegedly used on the police team that went in the jungle to catch him, the SSP said that an investigation is still going on to find that out.
Police had on Tuesday claimed that Sajid was killed in retaliatory firing as he first fired at the police.
“There are many unanswered questions and we are not totally relying on what Javed told us. Our investigation is on,” added the SSP.
Opposition parties in U.P. had questioned the veracity of the encounter after which the District Magistrate ordered a magisterial probe into the incident.
