Murder suspect Aakash Kashyap, Ankit Sagar’s student, was said to be furious about the teacher’s alleged advances towards his girlfriend.
New Delhi: A final-year engineering student has been arrested for the murder of a Delhi-based tuition teacher earlier this month.
Ankit Sagar, 31, was allegedly shot dead on the premises of his coaching centre at Mahendra Park by Aakash Kashyap, 21, a student of computer science at Delhi Technological University (DTU).
He was identified after Delhi Police combed through CCTV footage from the site of the crime as well as areas nearby, and caught the assailant in a careless moment.
Kashyap, a student of the victim, was reportedly furious about Sagar’s alleged advances towards his girlfriend. He shot Sagar because “the deceased would not stop talking to Aakash’s girlfriend two years after she quit the tuition classes”, Mahender Park station house officer (SHO) Harivansh Singh told ThePrint.
“This angered Aakash, and he began planning Ankit’s murder,” he added.
Also read: Delhi tuition teacher shot dead for ‘affair’ with Muslim student
The arrest
According to witnesses, on 1 October, Sagar was shot in the back of his head by a masked gunman. The assailant had reportedly waited by a stairwell near the entrance of the institute for 25 minutes.
Initial reports after the murder suggested Sagar had been killed by one of the brothers of a Muslim student he was reportedly dating.
According to the reports, the couple had plans to get married, but the girl’s family was fiercely opposed to the idea on religious grounds.
Nine members of the girl’s family were brought in for questioning, but the investigation soon revealed they were not involved.
As police tracked the assailant’s flight from the site through multiple CCTV cameras, they managed to spot him removing his mask and cap at a place he believed he wasn’t being recorded.
After identifying several markers, such as two tiny scars on the assailant’s forehead, his “unique haircut” and muscular build, police said they asked different teams to check with local gyms to see if anyone matched the description.
According to SHO Singh, the suspect was finally identified by Sagar’s sister as one of his students. Police then scanned Sagar’s Facebook friend list and arrived at Aakash’s profile through a series of mutual friends.
Singh told ThePrint that police raided Kashyap’s house at 1.30 am Friday.
“He even tried to jump some 18 feet from the balcony to escape and injured himself in the process. But our team had the area surrounded,” the SHO added.
At a press conference where she announced the arrest, deputy commissioner of police Aslam Khan said, by the time he was captured, Kashyap had managed to get rid of the mask and cap, but not the murder weapon, a country-made pistol.
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‘A bright recluse’
Kashyap’s parents run a business selling milk products in Chandni Chowk. According to a report in The Indian Express, his family described him as “a recluse with no friends from school or college, but so bright that his school had fast-tracked his progress, and he had taken admission into DTU at the age of 17”.
“He was a very intelligent child who kept to himself,” an uncle told the paper.