Mother of man killed in Delhi says ‘blood was spilling, he died in my lap’

delhi

Updated: Feb 03, 2018 13:20 IST

As 23-year-old Ankit Saxena lay bleeding on a busy road in west Delhi’s Raghubir Nagar on Thursday evening, his mother’s pleas for help went unanswered for nearly 20 minutes. The youth had been killed in front of his parents, allegedly by family members of a woman he was courting, police said.

Saxena’s mother, Kamlesh, said she did not expect the bystanders to fight for her son, but she refused to forgive the apathy of the onlookers even after her son’s throat was slashed.

“There were dozens of people watching my son get beaten up, but none of them dared to save him. My son was a body builder himself, but he was helpless when the killers caught and killed him. The sight of the woman’s father wielding a big kukri knife must have scared others,” said Kamlesh.

“My husband and I kept begging people to arrange a vehicle to rush my son to a hospital, but no one helped. E-rickshaw and auto drivers would stop, take a look and leave,” she said.

“Blood was spilling out of my son’s neck and mouth and I tried to stop it with my hands... He died in my lap,” she said. “When an e-rickshaw driver finally agreed to help, my husband and I loaded my son onto the vehicle,” she said. By the time they arrived at the Guru Gobind Singh Hospital nearby, Saxena had already died.

Police said the as the victim’s family tried to stop their son’s murder, they were allegedly beaten up by the woman’s family.

Through the scuffle and the subsequent murder, the local police remained unaware about the crime.

Vijay Kumar, DCP (west), said the police got to know of the crime after Saxena’s body was brought to the hospital.

The trigger for Thursday’s murder was an allegedly an argument between the woman, identified only by her first name Shehzadi (20), and her parents the previous night. “She had angrily walked out of her home after telling her parents that she would marry Saxena. Her parents feared she would elope with Saxena and were looking out for him. When they finally found him outside his home on Thursday evening, they beat him up before finally killing him,” said an investigator.

Kamlesh contradicted the police’s version that her son was in a relationship with Shehzadi, but said she did not believe that the trigger for the murder was the fact that they belonged to different communities.

“The woman’s family would look at all neighbourhood youths with suspicion. Three years ago, her parents suspected another youth, Azhar, of eyeing her and thrashed him at his home,” she said.

Locals said Saxena would frequent the lane where Shehzadi lived, but were unaware about an alleged relationship between the two. “Ankit was my friend and he would visit my home at times. But until he was killed, I did not know he was in love with Shehzadi,” said Deepak, who lives in the same building as the 20-year-old woman.

Shehzadi lived with her parents and three siblings in a rented accommodation in Raghubir Nagar’s B-Block. Her mother runs a parlour and father is a driver. Saxena lived a few hundred metres away and was the only child to his parents and was the sole earning member of his family.