The sad shooting of a Dalit schoolteacher, his wife, and two young kids in Uttar Pradesh’s Amethi was the result of a “illicit relationship gone sour,” authorities claimed on Friday.
According to the police, the accused, Chandan Verma, had an affair with the teacher’s wife for 18 months, with whom he was having problems.
“Verma confessed to killing the family. He claimed he had been having an affair with Poonam for the past 18 months.
However, a disturbance in the connection caused him concern. “It appears that he arrived at the victim’s house and became enraged for some reason, after which he began shooting the family members, killing all of them,” police said in a statement to the media.
On Thursday, Sunil Kumar, 35, a government school teacher, his 32-year-old wife Poonam, and the couple’s two daughters were shot dead in Amethi’s Ahorwa Bhawani district.
A day after the event, Verma was apprehended near a toll plaza in Noida on his way to Delhi. While the police were attempting to recover the handgun and magazine used to murder the family, Verma grabbed the gun and shot at them.
During this moment, one of the police personnel shot the accused in the leg.
Verma became the primary suspect in the case after it was discovered that the school teacher’s wife had previously filed a complaint against him under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 19.
According to Superintendent of Police Anoop Kumar Singh, Verma attempted suicide by shooting himself after killing his family, but the gun misfired.
Poonam’s complaint stated that Verma attacked her and her husband with casteist insults, and as a result, he was charged with atrocities against Dalits under the SC/ST Act.
The complainant stated in the FIR that “if anything happens to me or my family, Verma should be held responsible for it.”
‘Five individuals will die’: Accused’s WhatsApp Status
Nearly three weeks after the victim filed a complaint against Verma, he wrote his “clear intentions” on his WhatsApp bio, saying: “Five people are going to die; I will show you soon”.
According to the authorities, the accused intended to shoot himself after killing the four-member family. “He was the fifth person, but his suicide attempt failed,” the police reported.
However, the event sparked significant criticism of the Rae Bareli police, who apparently failed to decipher the “writing on the wall” even after receiving the accused’s WhatsApp status.
