The Mumbai Police arrested actor Kamaal R Khan, popularly known as KRK, early Saturday morning in connection with an incident in which two bullets were fired at a residential building in Lokhandwala, Andheri, last Sunday.
“He has been arrested under the Arms Act and an investigation is underway to find out the reason for the dismissal,” said Dikshit Gedam, deputy commissioner of police (Zone 9), confirming the fact. He was arrested on charges of attempted manslaughter and committing an act that endangers the personal safety of others, in addition to articles of the Weapons Law.
The incident took place at the Nalanda building in Andheri (west) on January 18. Writer-director Neeraj Kumar Mishra and model Prateek Baid, who were staying on the second and fourth floors of the building respectively, told police that they had heard a sound that was like someone firing a gun and then found a “bullet” inside their house.
Oshiwara police registered an offense and launched an investigation into the matter. At first, the case was so open that police labeled the objects “projectiles,” pending forensic verification.
Police later obtained confirmation that the “projectiles” were indeed bullets, albeit of low caliber, indicating that they were relatively less lethal. Depending on where the bullets were found, the police began looking for possible places where the bullets would have had to be fired to land inside the two apartments.
A senior officer said: “We used a drone to find out the possible trajectory of the bullet and came to the conclusion that it came from a high altitude and was not fired from the ground.”
A police officer explained that the search was simplified by the layout of the area: right next to the Nalanda building was an expanse of mangroves, followed by open land. Right next to the ground was a bungalow where Kamaal R Khan resided.
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Meanwhile, another team began checking registered gun owners in the area to see who had access to a firearm that matched the caliber of bullets found. It was then that the team discovered that Khan had registered his firearm at the Oshiwara police station.
“Given that his house was in the range from where the bullets could have been fired and that he possessed a firearm of similar caliber, we suspect his involvement,” an officer said. Based on this, Khan was taken to Oshiwara Police Station for questioning on Friday.
According to the police, during interrogation, Khan allegedly confessed that he was testing his licensed gun near the window when the bullets were unintentionally fired. Police are now checking whether Khan has all the necessary documents for the firearm, which has already been confiscated.
Khan was produced in court on Saturday and remanded in police custody till January 27. While seeking his custody, the police said that they needed his custody to interrogate him about the reason behind the dismissal.
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Khan’s lawyer Virendra Mishra, however, argued that the distance between Khan’s residence and the Nalanda building was 400 meters and the range of his firearm was not that long. “Further, I argued that there was no motivation for my client to terminate because there was no empathy between them,” Mishra said.
