Man fights burglar, gets shot

A 37-year-old Uttam Nagar resident was shot dead at his house by a masked assailant on Thursday night. The victim had caught the man ransacking his ground floor residence. HT reports.

A 37-year-old Uttam Nagar resident was shot dead at his house by a masked assailant on Thursday night. The victim had caught the man ransacking his ground floor residence.

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Sanjay Kumar Sharma, an electronics maintenance executive, had returned to his Gurdwara Road residence with his wife Suman and seven-year-old son when he realised that something was amiss.

"They had gone to the market to buy vegetables around 7.15 pm and met me on their way back at 9 pm. Fifteen minutes later he was shot dead," said Manoharlal (79), Sharma's aggrieved father.

Sharma rushed inside his house when he saw that the padlock on the main door was broken.

"When he entered the house, he saw that his bedroom door's lock was also broken. He saw a masked man ransacking the cupboard. Sharma rushed towards the man and caught hold of him by the scruff of his neck," said a senior Delhi Police officer.

Police said the assailant fired a shot from his country-made pistol during the scuffle but missed Sharma.

"Sharma beat the man and pushed him outside the house and into the narrow bylane leading to it. It is here that the assailant managed to shoot at Sharma again — and this time he didn't miss," the officer said.

The lone assailant fled after shooting Sharma on the left side of his torso.

"His wife immediately made a PCR call and even waited for it for 10 minutes as he lay bleeding on the street. When no one turned up, she begged a passerby to help her take him to the Mata Chanan Devi Hospital," said Pradeep Kumar (43), Sharma's elder brother who stays at Dwarka Mor.

Sharma fought for his life for two hours before being declared dead at 1 am.

"The doctors kept dilly-dallying and weren't able to find the bullet in several X rays. We should have taken him somewhere else but couldn't. Neither the police nor the hospital did their work right," Pradeep alleged.

Deputy commissioner of police (west) Sharad Aggarwal said, "We reached the spot in time and have registered a case of murder at the Uttam Nagar Police Station. We are investigating the matter."