Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Class 8 students shoots I4 yr old classmate to death in India

NEW DELHI, Dec. 11 — A simmering feud among a group of eighth graders exploded today in an upscale suburb of the Indian capital in a rare school shooting.

The police detained two boys, both age 14, in connection with the killing of their classmate, also 14, at Euro International School in Gurgaon, one of India’s flourishing outsourcing hubs. But the police said guns have been a growing menace there.

Sudhir Balan, the deputy commissioner of police for Gurgaon,

said one of the boys had brought his father’s gun to school today, hidden in a sock. Shortly after classes ended in the afternoon, the boy and a fellow classmate, confronted a third student, Abishek Tyagi, in the school corridor, and took turns shooting him, apparently at close range. The victim arrived at Pushpanjali Hospital with two bullets lodged in his chest, and a third in the head.

The boys had been quarreling for the last several days, Mr. Balan said, so much so that the principal had summoned their parents to school and recommended meditation as an anger management technique. With the two boys in custody this evening, the police were searching for the fathers of the two suspects. Both fathers are real estate agents.

Mr. Balan said real estate dealers, because they engage in large cash transactions, are increasingly fond of carrying guns in Gurgaon. The boy who took the gun told the police that his father usually kept it in the drawer of the family’s television table. It was unclear whether it was licensed.

School shootings are virtually unheard of in India, though there have been at least two incidents in the last three years, according to Indian news channels.

No comments: