New Delhi: He is not radical and is a “simple boy” but he was “tired” of travelling extra kilometers as roads are blocked due to protests at Shaheen Bagh, said family members of Kapil Gujjar, who was arrested for firing in the air at the south-east Delhi locality on Saturday.
Kapil, who owns a dairy business in Dallupura village on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border, fired two rounds in the air at Shaheen Bagh, the epicentre of anti-CAA protests due to which a major road connecting south Delhi to Noida is blocked for over a month now.
“On normal days, it takes two hours to reach the Badarpur Dairy (in south Delhi). He had to travel just 10 kilometres. But due to the protests, he had to travel 35 kilometres and he reached home at 1am. He was tired with this but definitely not that disturbed to do anything like that (shooting),” Kapil’s uncle, Fateh Singh, said.
The Gujjar family has a small dairy unit in Dallupura and a larger one at Badarpur, and the business was getting affected as Road No 13 at Kalindi Kunj is blocked, he claimed.
“I was in my house till 12 pm and left for office after that. Till that time Kapil was in the house. Later, I received information that he fired rounds in Shaheen Bagh,” Kapil’s father, Gaje Singh, told reporters.
“The family was shocked. He left without informing anyone and all thought he went to play cricket,” said Singh, who had contested the assembly elections from Jangpura on a BSP ticket in 2010 but lost.
“We have no idea how he has done it, from where he procured the weapon. He is a very simple boy and never messes with anyone,” he said. Twenty-five-year-old Kapil, who has a one-year-old daughter, wanted to become a reporter, but he dropped out of college and joined the dairy business, family members said.
He had joined the media course at IMS College in Delhi after passing out from a local school at Vasundhara, they said.
Kapil did not have any “radical thoughts” or influence of any religious or political groups, his family members claimed.
“He is a simple boy who can only think about buffaloes and expanding his father’s dairy business. Today at 12:30 pm, he left his house after greeting me like every day. I thought he left for the dairy in Badarpur but later in the evening we learnt from news channels that he has been arrested for firing,” said Satish Kumar, a relative.
He also added that a week ago, the Gujjar family had to drop its plan to attend a wedding because they did not want to take a long detour to go to south Delhi.
According to a police officer, during Kapil’s interrogation, it was learnt that he had to go to Lajpat Nagar in south Delhi and he felt very inconvenient to take a detour. This claim is being verified, the officer said.
“We suspect that he was instigated by someone at Shaheen Bagh but he was not carrying a pistol with him when he left from home. We just saw him being taken by police and later Azad Nagar police reached home for investigation,” Singh said.
“Had we known Kapil was going to Shaheen Bagh, we would have never let him go,” he added. (PTI)
