The shootout at Barkas in Old City turned out to be a complex case faced by investigators in recent times since it involved crucial points as to who fired at whom and with which weapon. Though eventually police managed to reconstruct the crime and sequence of events, there are lessons investigators can learn from the case.
The foremost is collecting cotton swabs of hands of suspects to find out presence of Gun Shot Residue in such cases. In case of a suicide, swabs of hands are collected from the hands of the victim to confirm that the person used the weapon. Strangely, police collected cotton swabs of only one person in this sensational case in which three firearms were used.
Even that proved to be a goof-up as the person, Ibrahim Yafai, from whom swabs were collected, did not use the weapon, and died when Jany Miya, gunman of MIM MLA, Ahmed Bin Balala, returned fire. Investigators failed to collect swabs of Abdullah Bin Yafai, who was accused of firing at Mr. Owaisi with his licensed revolver and another assailant, Wahlan. The second assailant used a country-made weapon.
The swabs were not taken in the case of the gunman also. The investigators maintained this was not necessary since the gunman himself admitted to have fired at the assailant to save the MLA’s life. Yet, this became a moot point since Mr. Owaisi too was later found to have carried a pistol in his hand, and doubts were raised if Yafai died of bullet fired from his weapon.
Mr. Owaisi, however, told police that he could not use the weapon having suffered bleeding injuries on the hand. Now, the big question is how the investigators are going to establish that Abdullah Bin Yafai had shot Mr. Owaisi without the scientific evidence of the presence of GSR on his hands. In the sensational case of mysterious death of film actress, Pratyusha, a few years ago, failure by staff of the hospital, where she was admitted, to preserve her clothes gave scope for many suspicions. Later, police directed all the hospitals to ensure clothes of the patients admitted in medico-legal cases be preserved.
In the present case, not collecting swabs from the suspects too might turn out a mistake from prosecution point of view.
–Agencies