New Video Of Delhi Clashes Shows Firing On Crowd From Hospital Rooftop

A set of high-resolution videos have emerged of a group of rioters on a terrace of a nursing home firing at the crowd below in northeast Delhi's Yamuna Vihar. The videos accessed by NDTV appears to have been filmed from a building in Delhi's Chand Bagh, opposite Mohan Nursing Home and Hospital.

In it, the rioters, some of them with masks on, are seen carefully picking out targets at the height of the violence in northeast Delhi over the controversial citizenship law.

The videos bring further clarity to an earlier viral cellphone video of the same incident, reported by NDTV.

That older video of the same incident - shots being fired from the rooftop of Mohan Nursing Home on February 24 - was of lower quality. In the high-resolution video, however, a man in black jacket and wearing a helmet is clearly seen firing intermittently at the crowd below.

While the shooter's face is covered, several around him are unmasked, their faces clearly identifiable.

The police are yet to act on this particular video, filmed in the midst of a pitched battle between the largely Hindu residents of Yamuna Vihar, and Muslim-dominated Chand Bagh.

Homes were burnt, vehicles were vandalised and people were lynched during the Delhi violence

In another video filmed during this time, the body of a young man, bleeding from a gunshot wound in the stomach, is seen being lowered from a low-rise building diagonally across the road from the hospital.

The man, who was later declared dead, was identified as  Shahid Khan Alvi, 22, an autorickshaw driver from Uttar Pradesh's Bulandshahr who happened to be in Delhi when violence broke out.

It's unclear if his death was linked to the rooftop shooter atop Mohan Nursing Home.

The only known shooter who has been arrested is Shahrukh, a young man from northeast Delhi's Jaffrabad. He was seen pointing a handgun at a policeman's face, just inches away from him, while a mob behind him threw stones during the second day of clashes on February 24.

The violence that started on February and went on for three days left 53 dead and hundreds injured. But of the 39 deaths for which the causes are known, at least 12 or over one-third died of gunshot injuries, hospital records show. At least 97 have gunshot wounds.

Ayesha, a resident who lives in Chand Bagh directly across the road from the nursing home, and whose home was burnt by those indulging in violence, saw the mob. "I saw at least 50 people on the rooftop of Mohan Nursing Home. Most of those people were helmets and had sticks in their hands. I don't know who they were. I had left by the time shots were fired. I did see stone-throwing from there," she said.

Navneet Gupta, who runs a coaching centre right next to the nursing home, says he too could not identify those on the rooftop of the nursing home, but says they may have acted out of self-defence.

The mobs from Chand Bagh vandalised his coaching centre, and damaged the nursing home.

NDTV tried to contact the owner of the nursing home, Sunil Mohan, but he was not to be found. Staff at the hospital said they had vacated the hospital by 3:30 pm that day, and the mobs may have taken over the terrace after that. They said all the devices which had CCTV footage had been taken away by mobs.

Police officials at the Bhajanpura Police Station, under which the hospital falls, did not respond to queries over whether they are probing the incident.

Parallels have been drawn to the shootings during the Delhi violence to incendiary comments by some leaders, including BJP's Anurag Thakur. The "goli maaro" slogan earned notoriety in the Delhi poll campaign. Mr Thakur had, at a rally, shouted the first half of the slogan - "desh ke gaddaron ko" or the traitors of the country. The crowd responded with "goli maaro *** ko". The complete slogan translates to a call to "shoot down traitors of the country".