Seeing the gun, they went for cams

Not everybody had ran for cover when Rahul Raj brandished his revolver and fired in the air inside a double-decker bus on Monday to “get even” with MNS chief Raj Thackeray.

A group of youngsters standing nearby had quickly pulled out their mobilephones and began recording the incident. They could not record the actual encounter though, as it took place in the staircase of the BEST bus. 

“For the first time I saw something like this,” said a 27-year-old insurance agent (name withheld). Standing merely metres away, he recorded the action. “He was pointing his revolver in the air. It never struck us then that he could fire at us. He kept saying that he would not harm any of us. He just wanted to kill Raj Thackeray,” he added.

One among the youngsters — a 24-year-old software developer (name withheld on request) — got so excited that he ran back to the first-floor balcony of his house, which was nearby, and started shooting with his handycam. “I had only read about encounters in newspapers and seen some in films. For the first time, I was witnessing one live.” His video footage was used by news channels.

The insurance agent too handed over his recordings to the media. After the excitement died down, and “reality sank in”, he deleted the recordings from his mobile phone. “I don’t want to get involved in police investigations and court proceedings,” he said.

Meanwhile, a relative of Rahul Raj, accompanied by a CID team from Bihar, went to JJ hospital on Tuesday. They were handed over the body around noon and left for the domestic airport. They would be flying back to Patna via Delhi. Raj’s father Kundan Kumar could not come to claim his body as he was unwell.