LUCKNOW: The autopsy report of slain Apple executive Vivek Tiwari and the version of lone eyewitness Sana Khan ripped apart the claim of accused police constable Prashant Chaudhary that he fired in self-defence as Tiwari had tried to run him over in the wee hours on Saturday.
Tiwari, 38, was shot dead in the posh Gomti Nagar Extension area here when he was on his way to drop ex-colleague Sana Khan home in his SUV. The post-mortem report said the entry and exit wounds on Tiwari suggest the shot was fired from a height, as the direction of the bullet was downwards and backwards.
Chaudhary though claimed he pulled the trigger as Tiwari tried to run him over thrice to kill him. If it was so, the autopsy report ought to have given some indication. Instead, it said the person who fired the shot was neither bent nor leaning towards any side. “If the deceased was trying to run over the accused, the latter would have fired in frenzy and in that case the angle and impact of the bullet would have been different,” explained a private forensic expert.
The autopsy report tallied with Khan’s version, who claimed Chaudhary was standing on the road divider when he fired the shot, which gave him the advantage of height. The bullet pierced the windscreen and hit Tiwari on his chin.
Crime scene footage to be handed over to SIT probing Apple techie’s killing
Standing on the divider, Chaudhary used filthy language and pulled out his revolver, Khan said. He used both hands to hold the weapon and pull the trigger. Chaudhary’s colleague Sandeep Kumar was standing on the left of the SUV. None of them was injured, Khan told the police.
Narrating the sequence of events, Khan said while they were in conversation Tiwari had parked the vehicle on the roadside around 1.15 am on that fateful night. That was when two constables approached them, inquired about their names and addresses and asked why they were in a parked car so late into the night. They the cops started hurling invectives, which was why Tiwari tried to reverse the vehicle and leave, by Chaudhary fired at him.
Meanwhile, the parallel magisterial team, headed by Additional City Magistrate Salil Patel, collected the footages of five CCTV cameras installed on a government building — Uttar Pradesh Rajya Nirman Shahkari Sangh (UPRNSS) — in the vicinity.
While sifting through the footages, the probe team spotted Tiwari’s SUV moving slowly in the area near the crime scene at 1:19 am of Saturday. The murder, according to investigators, occurred around 1:30 am. The video footage of CCTV cameras on the UPRNSS building may be able to reveal what happened in the 11 minutes in between.
ACM said that the footages would be handed over the SIT, led by IG Lucknow Sujeet Pandey, for examination.The SIT team had visited the crime scene with ballistic and forensic experts on Saturday and examined the spot.
Meanwhile, refuting claims in some sections of the media that the accused constables were not posted in the area where the murder took place, police officials confirmed that they were posted Maqdoompur police outpost and were on night duty.The crime spot falls under the same police outpost.
CCTV cam footage of crime scene
A magisterial team collected footage of five CCTV cameras in the vicinity. They show Tiwari’s car moving at 1.19 am. The footage has been shared with the SIT