‘Shaheen Bagh Khel Khatam’: Man Who Shot Jamia Student Said on FB
One of his Facebook posts read Shaheen Bagh...Khel Khatam (Shaheen Bagh...Game Over).
In the moments before he fired a pistol at a group of anti-CAA protesters at New Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia University on Thursday, 30 January, injuring a student, the assailant put up a number of inflammatory posts on his Facebook account.
The gunman also posted four live videos from the location of the shooting. The photos that later emerged identify him as being the assailant.
The person’s account has been deactivated since then. In an official statement, Facebook said “there is no place for this kind of violence” on the platform.
"There is no place on Facebook for those who commit this kind of violence. We have removed the gunman’s Facebook account and are removing any content that praises, supports or represents the gunman or the shooting as soon as we identify it," the statement read.
News agency ANI reported, quoting police sources that the assailant is a resident of Jewar in Gautam Buddha Nagar district in Uttar Pradesh.
‘Khel Khatam...’, ‘Azaadi De Raha Hu’
In the posts that he put up in the lead up to the incident, he made his intentions quite clear.
About 30 minutes before he fired the shot, he posted saying “Azaadi De Raha Hu (Giving them freedom)."
According to news agency PTI, after he fired the shot, he walked away waving the firearm above his head and shouting “Yeh lo aazadi (Here, take your freedom)" amid heavy police presence in the area.
He also posted that he was the ‘only Hindu’ at the spot and no ‘Hindu media’ was present there.
‘Revenge for Chandan Bhai’
In yet another post, he termed his actions as revenge for ‘Chandan Bhai’, referring to Chandan Gupta, an individual from Uttar Pradesh's Kasganj, who was killed in communal violence in January 2018.
Violence broke out in Kasganj, where a ‘Tiranga Yatra’ rally organised by the ABVP and the Sankalp Foundation rode through a Muslim locality on Republic Day that year ultimately leading to the death Chandan.
Jamia Student Injured
During the incident, Shadab Farooq, a mass communication student in Jamia, was injured in his left hand and taken to the AIIMS Trauma Centre, according to news agency PTI.
The students were heading from Jamia to Mahatma Gandhi's memorial Rajghat when the march was stopped at the Holy Family Hospital near the university.
"We were moving towards the Holy Family Hospital where the police had raised barricades. Suddenly, a gun-wielding man came out and opened fire. One bullet hit my friend's hand," Aamna Asif, a student of economics at the university, told PTI.
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