Minutes before he opened fire on a group of Jamia Millia Islamia students protesting against the CAA and the NRC, the Jamia gunman had gone live on his Facebook account from the protest venue. A cursory scroll through his Facebook profile, now deleted, indicates he had been planning some kind of provocation at Thursday’s rally.
At around 1 pm, the youth started live videos showing the protest march to Raj Ghat. Another live video simply has a selfie video of him, wearing a black full-sleeve jacket, which he is seen wearing in the visuals put out after he opened fire. He says nothing in the live video, but his older posts are much more telling.
Against a bright red background, his text posts seem to indicate that he was preparing for some kind of consequences of what he was about to do. Another post claimed ‘no Hindu media’ was present at the spot. Other posts are more threatening, abusing the protesters at Shaheen Bagh, and one claiming that he is ‘giving freedom’.
The gunman made a string of such posts just before he brandished a gun at the students of Jamia Millia Islamia who were carrying out a protest march to Raj Ghat. 200 metres from Holy Family Hospital in Delhi’s Okhla, he then opened fire at the protesters, shouting, “Yeh lo aazadi (Here, take freedom)” and “Hindustan zindabad… Delhi police zindabad.” The moment he opened fire, he was overpowered by the police, who were watching the events unfold from a distance till then. He was then taken to New Friends Colony police station.
One student, identified as Shadaab, a mass communication student studying in Jamia, was shot in the hand and visuals show that he had to climb over the police barricades to be taken to the hospital.