NOIDA: A 22-year-old student was found dead with a gunshot wound in the head while his close friend lay critically injured with a similar wound inside a private hostel room in Knowledge Park in Noida on Tuesday morning. Police are trying to piece together how the gunshots were fired and what led to the shooting as the two students were considered “inseparable” by friends.The incident occurred around 10.30am at RCI Vidya Vihar hostel in Knowledge Park-III. The two students – Deepak Kumar (22) from Andhra Pradesh and Devansh Chauhan (23) from Agra – were both enrolled in the PGDM programme at Birla Institute of Management Technology (Bimtech). They were, however, not roommates. It was in Kumar’s room where the shots were fired. Chauhan is in Kailash hospital. His condition is critical. Both bullets came from the same licensed revolver, which was fully loaded and belonged to Chauhan’s father Surender Singh Chauhan, who retired as a circle officer in UP STF on Aug 31. Chauhan, who went home last Saturday to attend his father’s farewell party, is believed to have sneaked the gun out when he left for his hostel on Tuesday morning itself. Chauhan had reached the hostel barely a couple of hours before the incident.”He had come home on Saturday to attend our father’s retirement party. On Tuesday morning, he returned to college. He left home around 5.30am and reached his hostel by 9am. It was around noon that we received a call from the college authorities about the firing incident,” said Shivang Chaurasia, Chauhan’s brother who lives in Gurgaon.Surender Chauhan told TOI he kept the gun in a cupboard in his room. “It was only a few hours since Chauhan left home. I didn’t realise that the gun was missing too.” At Vidya Vihar hostel, it was a guard who first sensed something amiss after hearing faint groans from the locked room. Unable to get any response, he alerted the hostel warden. After repeated attempts to open the door failed, some staff members climbed to the rear balcony with a ladder and peered inside. What they saw was shocking. Inside, Kumar lay dead. Chauhan was groaning in pain. According to the chief medical officer of Kailash hospital, the bullet lodged in Kumar’s head was fired from the right side. “The boy suffered brain death,” he said.In Chauhan’s case too, the bullet was fired from the right. “The revolver had six bullets. Two were used, four remain. No official complaint has been filed yet,” the investigating officer said.A police team arrived at the hostel around 11.30am and secured the area. Forensic experts recovered the revolver, four live cartridges, and two bullet shells. They also seized the students’ mobile phones, laptops, and other personal belongings from the room.While the exact sequence of events is unclear, police are examining the possibility of a confrontation between the two students.Bimtech did not respond to requests for a comment.
