Road rage: 24-yr-old beats man to death in Palam, arrested

The witness told investigators that an argument erupted between the scooterist and a man in a Hyundai i10 after their vehicles brushed against each other.

A 24-year-old man was arrested for allegedly beating a scooterist to death following a road rage incident in southwest Delhi’s Palam Village on Saturday night, police said.

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Deputy commissioner of police (southwest) Amit Goel identified the accused as Karan Arora, a deaf and non-vocal resident of Sadh Nagar, Palam Colony, who works at a Gurugram club owned by his brother-in-law. Police have also seized the Hyundai i10 car used in the incident.

A PCR call around midnight on October 4 alerted police to an unconscious man lying on the road near Sadh Nagar. Officers from Palam Village police station reached the spot to find a damaged scooter and learned that the injured man had been taken to Indira Gandhi Hospital in Dwarka, where doctors declared him dead on arrival. He had suffered multiple injuries to his chest, police said.

Based on an eyewitness account, police registered a case under Section 105 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (culpable homicide not amounting to murder). The witness told investigators that an argument erupted between the scooterist and a man in a Hyundai i10 after their vehicles brushed against each other. “The altercation escalated quickly. The car driver stepped out and began assaulting the scooterist, punching him repeatedly before speeding away,” a senior officer said.

Police teams then scanned CCTV footage in the area and tracked down the vehicle’s registration number. The car’s owner revealed it was being used by his brother-in-law, Karan Arora. A team nabbed him from the Najafgarh area two hours later.

With the help of a sign language interpreter, Arora allegedly admitted to attacking the victim after feeling provoked. “He claimed that the scooterist was gesturing at him in a manner he found insulting. In a fit of rage, he stepped out of his car and hit him several times before fleeing,” the officer said.

Police said Arora, who is 65% disabled since birth, cannot hear or speak. He has been sent to judicial custody after being produced in court. The police are awaiting the post-mortem report to confirm the cause of death.