Faridabad: Hunt on for 'stalker' who shot at teenage girl

A hunt is on for the youth who allegedly fired gunshots at a 17-year-old girl here in broad daylight, wounding her in shoulder and abdomen, police on Tuesday said.

The girl, who is preparing for JEE, was shot twice by an alleged stalker in Faridabad's Shyam colony on Monday evening when she was on her way home from a library.

The attacker has been identified as 20-year-old Jatin Mangla, a native of Sarmathla village near Gurugram's Sohna, the police said.

The victim, Kanishka, is stable and under treatment at a hospital in Sector 8.

Footage from a CCTV camera showed a youth, allegedly Mangla, waiting for Kanishka in a street and shooting at her at a close range.

One bullet struck her shoulder, while another grazed her abdomen.

Four teams have been formed to track down the attacker, a Faridabad Police spokesperson said.

According to the police, Kanishka, a resident of Bhagat Singh Colony and a class 12 science student of the Open Education Board, was being harassed by Mangla for the past few months.

Her sister told reporters that two days before the attack, Mangla had apologised to her family for stalking her.

Police said Mangla and Kanishka went to the same library to study.

"The accused enrolled in the Classmate Library about six months ago when the girl had been enrolled there for a year. The library management said Jatin Mangala works as an accountant at a nearby private college," Ballabhgarh City Police Station SHO, Inspector Shamsher Singh, said.

The officer said Mangla would not leave the girl alone, and kept hovering around her from the get go.

Within 15 days of his admission to the library, Mangla's membership was canceled, so was Kanishka's.

"The girl took admission again in the library about five months ago while the accused was denied admission. He continued stalking the girl," Singh said.

"Several teams of police station and crime branch are conducting raids to arrest him," he said.