GHAZIABAD: A bullet fired by bike-borne phone snatchers being chased by people hit a 35-year-old man who had come to drop his six-year-old son to the bus stop in Ghaziabad on Thursday.Virender Kumar, an IT engineer with a software firm in Sector 62 of Noida, was hit barely a couple of minutes after he had walked with his son, a Class I student of Silverline Prestige School in Ghaziabad, to the bus stop near Gandhi Nagar Crossing around 7.30am.Virender, who was hit near the midriff, has been admitted to Yashoda Hospital in Nehru Nagar. The two bike-borne youths, riding a white Apache bike, had entered Gandhi Nagar from Chaudhary Mod side after snatching the mobile phone of a student who was on his way to fetch milk.The student, Gagan, gave the bikers a chase and shouted for help, prompting people along the road to join him in the hot pursuit. “Barely a few metres ahead, another person who was alerted by the shouts of help spread out his arms and stood right in the middle of the road in an attempt to stop the bikers from escaping. Johny, the man who stood there, kicked at the bike when the snatchers tried to skirt him. The bike lost balance for a few seconds but did not skid. The man riding pillion then whipped out a gun and fired at Johnny, who ducked. The bullet hit Virender at the bus stop,” said SSI Jagmendra Kashyap.Sources said Virender did not realise he had been hit until he saw his shirt drenched in blood. “Virender was waiting for his son’s school bus. He heard only one gunshot. A few seconds later, as the chaos on the road subsided, he felt a sharp pain near his left midriff and noticed that his shirt was drenched in blood. Passersby gathered and helped his son board the school bus, which had arrived. Then, they took him to the hospital,” Virender’s colleague, Amarnath Shukla, said.Virender’s wife Manyata, a teacher in a private school in Pratap Vihar, was informed after the engineer was taken to the hospital. “The bullet grazed through the left midriff of the patient, but there were some shards in the body. He underwent a surgery and will be under observation for the next 24 hours,” said Dr Ashish Gautam of the hospital.A case has been registered at Sihani Gate police station under Section 394 (voluntarily causing hurt in committing robbery) of the IPC against unidentified persons. The FIR was registered on a complaint by Gagan. “We have procured CCTV footage from the area and have got images of the two suspects. We are trying to identify the suspects from the footage. The culprits will be nabbed soon,” Ghaziabad SSP Vaibhav Krishna said.

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