KASARGOD: A 14-year-old toying with his father’s air gun placed the entire district police force on tenterhooks and caused high drama, as he fabricated a story to escape reprimand after shattering the balcony glass of his home with the firearm. Police scoured CCTV footage, deployed forensic teams, collected ballistic analysis on Sunday to finally conclude that something was amiss.
On Saturday night, Uppala resident Ismail Sinan filed a complaint with Manjeshwar police about an unidentified person shooting the glass panel on the balcony of his home, shattering it and causing a Rs 25,000 damage between 5.45 pm and 5.53 pm. Police booked a case for manufacturing, selling, possessing prohibited arms and mischief of a serious nature. Sinan’s father Aboobacker Siddik lives in Qatar while his family stays at their house in Uppala.
The FIR caused an uproar as media teams rushed to Uppala, which was notorious for gang wars and links to gold smuggling in the past. “Some media houses even reported a spike in the crime rate in Uppala following the incident,” a police officer said.
There was speculation of the involvement of a Kozhikode-based gang that had visited Uppala recently after a gold-smuggling deal went wrong. Adding to the flutter, a Mangaluru-based history-sheeter Thoppi alias Naufal, 45, was found dead under suspicious circumstances on the railway tracks near Uppala last week.
Not willing to take any chances, district police chief B V Vijaya Bharat Reddy deployed a police team led by Manjeshwaram station inspector Ajith Kumar P, under the supervision of his deputy, ASP Nandagopalan M.
By Sunday evening, officers started picking holes in the complaint. CCTV footage showed no evidence of vehicles in the vicinity when the shooting was said to have happened. Five pellets found on the balcony added to the intrigue. And, the ballistic report proved that the shots were fired from inside the house.
When officers cornered the family with details, the boy spilled the beans. While his mother was away on a wedding, sister at work and brother in Mangaluru on Saturday evening, he took his father’s air gun and started playing with it. The gun fascinated the online-gaming-crazed teen, who ended up discharging it multiple times by accident. In panic, he called his brother in Mangaluru with a fabricated story of a “gang in a car firing at the house”.
The police closed the case without tacking action against the boy. “He was terrified and crying profusely. We decided to let him him with a stern warning,” the district police chief said.