Katihar: In a major twist to the Katihar firing incident, the Bihar Police on Friday claimed that the two persons did not die in police firing, but by bullets fired by an "unidentified" person. District Magistrate Ravi Prakash and Superintendent of Police Jitendra Kumar made the claim while sharing with the press a CCTV footage of the incident that took place on Wednesday.
Katihar SP, Jitendra Kumar said, "Today, we came here (incident spot) for an inquiry. Whatever we do will be fact-based. We checked the CCTV camera...We first went where the body was recovered & found that it is impossible for the bullet fired by the police to have hit the deceased given the distance. It is visible in the CCTV that a youth comes and opens fire at the two deceased..."
"It is a planned conspiracy. We had been smelling a rat since the police had fired its shots from a place too far to have hit any of the protesters," claimed the SP.
#WATCH | Bihar: CCTV visuals of the Katihar firing incident.
— ANI (@ANI) July 28, 2023
(Video source: IPRD) pic.twitter.com/qO1lhKtKwM
Two persons had died while several others, including many police personnel and power department officials, were injured in the district's Barsoi area where a demonstration demanding better electricity supply turned violent.
The officials claimed that the CCTV footage showed a gun-toting man "coming from the direction where the first death took place. He can be then seen shooting at and injuring two other bystanders, one of whom died later".
Notably, while Khurshid Alam had died on the spot, Sonu Kumar Sahu succumbed to injuries at a hospital a few hours later. Another person, Neyaz Alam, is undergoing treatment at a hospital in Siliguri, West Bengal for his bullet injury.
The officials said an FIR has been lodged, both against named and unidentified persons, though they did not disclose the identities of the accused. They, however, asserted that all the accused will be brought to book soon.
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