Two members of a wedding party in India have been arrested after the groom’s 16-year-old cousin was shot dead.
Dharmendra Singh died after being struck by a bullet during a wedding function in Khaundali, a town in the Agra district of Uttar Pradesh, in the early hours of Thursday morning, according to the Times of India.
The newspaper reported that Singh’s family claimed the shooting was intentional, prompting police to arrest two people on murder charges.
Police are examining CCTV footage to determine if the shooting was deliberate or whether it was the result of a loaded gun being mishandled.
According to the newspaper, the gun belongs to a retired soldier who gave it a 19-year-old who asked to inspect it.
Stock photo. Two members of a wedding party in India were arrested after the groom’s 16-year-old cousin was shot dead.
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The teenager, identified only as Vivek, reportedly pulled the trigger and a bullet hit Singh in the chest at point blank range. Singh was standing with four other people and was struck by the last of three bullets that were fired from the weapon.
He was transported to hospital, but succumbed to his injuries during the journey.
His elder brother, Anil Kumar, told the Times of India that Singh had arrived in Agra for the wedding at the beginning of the week. Kumar added that “someone had killed him deliberately.”
A police spokesman said that Vivek and Gyanendra Singh were booked on murder charges. It was not clear what their relationship to the victim was.
The incident is just the latest violent incident connected to a wedding in India.
It comes a couple of weeks after a man in India found his daughter’s dead body in the street days before she was due to marry.
The father, Madanpal Singh, was delivering the last of his 19-year-old daughter’s wedding invitations when he saw a crowd of people around a body in the road and realized it was his own daughter.
His daughter, Meenakshi Singh, had received a call from her fiancé that morning and asked if she’d like to go shopping.
The fiancé, identified only as Jitin, was arrested for the woman’s killing the following day. He claimed he had tried to call off the wedding, leading to an argument.
And in May, a groom was kidnapped and ordered at gunpoint to call off his wedding.
The man, identified Jugal Kushwaha, was abducted from his wedding venue by three men and taken by motorcycle to an orchard. In the orchard, the men threatened to shoot him in the middle of his wedding if he went ahead with the nuptials.
