Lucknow, June 28: The murder of a student leader yesterday led to a spiral of violence in Meerut, with an advocate and a constable killed in an alleged shootout and scores of lawyers vandalising the district magistrate’s office.

Hours after research scholar Sanjiv Gujjar was shot dead in his hostel at Chaudhary Charan Singh University on Tuesday morning, the police identified his motorcycle-borne assailants as Neeraj Malik and Nitin Kasana.

When the police raided Neeraj’s home at Jagriti Nagar around 7 pm yesterday, the suspect and his advocate father Satveer Malik allegedly began firing at them, killing constable Praveen Giri.

The retaliatory shooting felled Satveer while Neeraj and Nitin escaped, the police said.

The two were arrested from the office of a private TV news channel in Noida late on Wednesday evening, after they had professed their innocence on the small screen.

Earlier, around noon today, over 200 lawyers marched into the residence of district magistrate Mukesh Meshram with the body of the 59-year-old Satveer, claiming the police had murdered him in a fake encounter.

The protesters ransacked the office inside Meshram’s residence. Later, lawyers from six other western Uttar Pradesh towns arrived in Meerut to join the street demonstrations. The protesters agreed to cremate Satveer only after Meshram ordered a probe.

Neeraj and Nitin followed the example of Sahil Zaroo ? an accused in the Rahul Mahajan and Bibek Moitra drug scandal ? by having their say over TV before giving themselves up to Noida police. They said they were afraid the Meerut police might kill them in a fake encounter.

“We are being framed and my father was killed in a (fake) encounter last night. We would have been killed had we stayed back. We wanted to surrender to the court. Since the court was closed today in Meerut, we reached here to give our version to the world,” Neeraj said.

Noida police would hand the duo over to Meerut police.

The university students staged their own agitation on the campus over Gujjar’s murder, prompting authorities to order the hostels vacated in 48 hours, suspend classes and put off all examinations indefinitely.