Bouncer gunned down in gang war

Ishrat S Banwait

Tribune News Service

Panchkula, May 8

A 30-year-old bouncer, Amit Sharma, alias Meet, was shot dead outside a temple in Saketri in broad daylight today. The father of a one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Meet was shot 11 times as he was leaving the temple with his mother around noon. Two assailants with muffled faces came in a Maruti Swift car, said the deceased's terrified mother, Roopa Rani. She was in a state of shock after seeing her son being killed in front of her eyes. She said more people might have been present inside the car.

On her statement, a case of murder, criminal conspiracy and offences punishable under the Arms Act has been lodged against Sonu Shah, Gagan and Surjeet, who were involved in a gang war with the deceased’s group in Mohali last November. An FIR has been registered at the Chandimandir police station in this regard. No arrests have, however, been made so far. A .9-mm revolver was used in the crime, police sources said.

According to an eyewitness, two men came to the temple and punctured the tyres of a car, which later turned out to be Meet's. One of them was urinating against a wall when Meet and his mother came out of the temple. Meet was about 20 ft ahead of his mother and both youths opened indiscriminate firing at him from behind before fleeing away in their car.

Onlookers, along with his mother, rushed a profusely bleeding Meet to the PGI, Chandigarh, where he was declared dead on arrival.

Over 10 bullets are said to have hit Meet in the chest, abdomen, back and left leg but the exact number will be clear after the postmortem, which will be conducted tomorrow. His body has been kept at the PGI mortuary.

As the news spread, hundreds of bouncers gathered outside Meet's house in Mani Majra. It is learnt that Meet had a tussle with his rival group of bouncers over the leadership of bouncers in the region, following which both groups had been involved in firing at each other in Chandigarh and Mohali earlier. “The incident seems to be a fallout of the same one-upmanship fight,” the sources said.

History of violence

Meet's brother Ashish said he was the head of the bouncers' group in Chandigarh and had been in the profession for the past around 12 years. While he used to provide bouncers to around 12 clubs earlier, he now had only two to three clubs under him.

Meet was involved in a firing incident last November in Mohali involving his group and another group of bouncers, led by Sonu Shah. Around 70 rounds were fired in that incident and Meet was arrested in the case later. The reason for the Mohali shooting was that both Meet and Sonu Shah wanted to head the bouncers' group in the region. Meet, who was facing an attempt-to-murder charge in the Mohali gang war case, was currently out on bail.

In July last, three men had shot at Akhil, a friend of Meet, at a gym in Sector 26, Chandigarh, and had threatened to kill Meet. It was the first incident after the rival groups of bouncers started nursing a grudge against each other.

The police said they were viewing the CCTV footage of nearby areas to get leads even as a CCTV camera installed at Saketri cow shed showed the assailants fleeing towards Kaimbwala. Chandimandir SHO Mohinder Singh said they had recovered four empty bullet shells from the spot. Senior police officers, including the Commissioner of Police and the Deputy Commissioner of Police, also visited the spot.