Police take the accused into custody and (above) bloodstains on Mayur Vihar road. Telegraph pictures

New Delhi, July 4: Weeks after a cold Calcutta crowd ignored a model’s cries as she was being molested, young men in Delhi today chased and caught a gunman who had just killed a person.

The youths also did something else: they turned the capital’s image on its head.

The entertainment industry — television channels, magazines and FM radio stations — loves calling Delhi the dilwalon ka shahar (city of those with a heart), but few who live here would agree.

The capital — where daylight crimes often committed in public view rarely face any opposition — has been topping the National Crime Research Bureau statistics year after year.

But today was different.

Manning a busy traffic junction, constable Ravi Sarna was too engrossed to hear the first shot. It took the collective gasps of bystanders, audible over the sound of hooting cars, for him to realise something was wrong. Then came the second shot, and Sarna stood stunned.

“A bike raced forward, ignoring the red light. It was gone in a flash. Another man, with a gun in his hand, was running across the street.... Then another bike with two young men on it chased this running man.... It all happened in a flash,” the constable said.

The man with the gun ran onto a muddy embankment off the road towards the Yamuna, making it hard for the bike to chase him.

The pillion rider then got off and ran after the gunman, Sarna said. “He caught him after about a 50m sprint.”

The gunman was dragged back to the road, where a crowd thrashed him before the bikers handed him over to police.

On the evening of June 18, Tina Mukherjee, a model, had been molested, punched on the nose and dragged towards a waiting car in Calcutta as a crowd ignored her cries for help. Calcutta has traditionally enjoyed the image of a city where people go out of their way to help others.

The victim of today’s firing was travelling by an auto-rickshaw from Noida towards Delhi, the police said. He was shot first in the chest and then — at point-blank range — in the head.

Bystanders took him to hospital, where he was declared dead on arrival.

“The victim was carrying a briefcase with over Rs 50,000. We haven’t been able to identify him yet,” a senior police official said.

The arrested man is 35 years old, police sources said, adding that he was initially on the bike with two other men that first raced away from the junction after the firing. He got off later and began running.

The sources said the man told the police that he had been following the victim for “some weeks”. But they are unwilling to disclose his name or that of the two men who chased him down.

The other two men on the first bike are yet to be traced.

“It is not yet clear what the motive of the firing was, but robbery seems the most likely reason at this point,” a police official said.

“Till we arrest them, we don’t want to disclose the names of the two men who nabbed the gunman. He (the gunman) has been beaten up quite badly by the crowd. He is not able to tell us anything much right now,” he added.

The men who chased the gunmen down will remain at Mayur Vihar police station through the night for security reasons, the sources said.