“What is your name? Where do you reside? What was your father’s name? And did the police tell you why you have been arrested?”
These were the questions judicial magistrate Kuldeep Singh put to 18-year-old Armaan, a Sector 22 resident accused of allegedly shooting dead his 45-year-old father, UT police head constable Nitin Kumar, during his production before a local court on Saturday.
After he calmly answered the first three questions, the court asked if he knew why he had been arrested, the teenager replied: “For murder.”
While police did not disclose details of the probe in open court, they told the court that Armaan had allegedly purchased a country-made pistol from a person in Haridwar. Police said the alleged supplier was yet to be arrested and they also needed to trace the links and associates involved in procuring the weapon. For this, they needed four days’ custody of the accused.
After hearing the submissions, the court granted three days’ police remand and directed that Armaan be produced again on September 29.
The accused was later taken to the court basement for fingerprinting and other formalities. When journalists asked him about the incident and whether he wanted to say anything, he remained silent.
An assistant sub-inspector (ASI) posted at the Sector 17 police station said Armaan had been changing his statements repeatedly, necessitating detailed interrogation during the remand period.
An inspector-rank officer said the teenager had been in a relationship with a woman from Zirakpur for around a year and a half, and had been living with her. The officer, however, clarified that the woman’s involvement in the alleged killing had not emerged during the preliminary investigation.
According to the information that has emerged so far in the police investigation, Armaan had shot dead his father while the latter was asleep. Moments before the crime, the duo had a heated argument over a 4-am alarm that the teenager had set, waking up his father.
But tensions between the two had allegedly been brewing for a long time. The teenager had a previous brush with the law after he allegedly ran over two madrassa teachers in a hit-and-run incident earlier in February. According to the police, he had also been seeking ₹10 lakh from his father to set up a second-hand automobile business. After his father told him to wait, the duo allegedly started having frequent arguments. Police said his insistence on marrying his alleged live-in partner, and his parents’ advice to wait till he was 21, further soured their relations.
Victim cremated
Meanwhile, the victim’s post-mortem was carried out at Government Multi Specialty Hospital (GMSH) Sector 16 on Saturday following which the body was handed over to the family for his last rites. The cremation took place at his native village, Khatauli, in Panchkula.
