Ranbir

Lucknow, July 5: Dehra Dun police may have tortured MBA graduate Ranbir Singh and then fired 10 bullets into his head and chest from close, one of the doctors who conducted the post-mortem have told The Telegraph.

The doctor’s version strengthens allegations that the police killed the 24-year-old in a fake encounter on Friday afternoon-hours before President Pratibha Patil’s visit.

“The body bore 12 bullet marks, a couple in the head and the rest in and around the chest. Two of the bullets pierced through his body, making two marks each — one going in and the other coming out,” the doctor, who cannot be named, said from Dehra Dun.

“Apart from these, there were 28 black bruises on the body, the most prominent ones on the shoulder and the rest on the hands, legs and head. These were caused by blunt objects. All the injuries were ante-mortem, that is, inflicted before his death.”

The doctor added that the bullets were all fired from the front — suggesting Ranbir wasn’t fleeing when shot — and that the bullets “caused deep black burns on the skin”.

An army veteran said such marks are caused when a person is shot from very close. “The black burns on the skin around the bullet marks suggest the police fired from close range,” retired colonel S.K. Pandit said in Lucknow.

Another doctor involved in the post-mortem was ready to be quoted on one single point. “Yes, there were 28 bruises apart from the bullet marks,” Dr Ajit Garula confirmed.

Ghaziabad resident Ranbir had arrived in Dehra Dun fresh after his MBA graduation to take up his first job, with Kotak Mahindra as trainee manager. The police say he was stopped during a vehicle check while travelling on a motorbike with two other young men.

He then allegedly snatched a sub-inspector’s gun, fled the spot and later fired at the police when surrounded in the Ladpur jungles on Dehra Dun’s outskirts. The police are silent about his two companions.

People claiming to be eyewitnesses, however, have alleged they saw Ranbir surrender to the police, who whisked him away in a jeep.

The preliminary post-mortem report has been handed over to the district magistrate, who is conducting a probe. The government has ordered a second probe by the police’s crime branch-criminal investigation department (CB-CID).

The four policemen involved in the “encounter” have been questioned by the inspector-general of police (Garhwal range), M.A. Ganapati.

“If they are found guilty, they will not be spared,” said Uttarakhand chief minister Ramesh Pokhriyal, who had met the victim’s father Ravindra Pal Singh, an ex-serviceman in his 70s, last evening.

Ranbir was cremated this morning in Bagpat, his home district in western Uttar Pradesh.

Ravindra, his brother Narendra and younger son Sandip were beaten up by the police yesterday morning, after reaching Dehra Dun to collect the body, when they broke into a protest before the morgue.