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Basharat Peer in New Delhi
"I am tired," said Sher Singh Rana aka Pankaj, prime accused in the Phoolan Devi murder, when asked by Metropolitan Magistrate Vimal Kumar whether he had anything to say before the court decided on the police application for his custody.
Rana, who was arrested in Dehradun on Friday, brought back to the capital at 0430 IST and lodged in the inter-state cell of the Delhi police at Chanakyapuri, was produced before Magistrate Kumar at the Patiala House Courts in the afternoon.
Public Prosecutor Irfan Ahmad told the court that police were still to recover two countrymade pistols, two mobile phones and four SIM cards, two purchased from Delhi and two from Uttar Pradesh. The Delhi SIM cards had been bought and used up on the day of Phoolan Devi's murder.
Ahmad told the court that there were three more accomplices to the crime. And while the alleged killers had waited for Phoolan Devi in a green car, they had parked another white car as backup on Ashoka Road itself.
The prosecutor reasoned that Rana's custodial interrogation was required because the police are still to arrest his accomplices. It is also trying to recover the clothes used by the accused on the day of the murder and find out from where they were bought.
According to the police reconstruction of the crime, Pankaj had dropped Phoolan Devi at Parliament House on Thursday morning and rushed to the Inter-State Bus Terminal in north Delhi, from where he proceeded Ashoka Road with his accomplices.
Rana had one revolver on his person. The attackers fired 11 shots, six of which hit Phoolan Devi while two injured her bodyguard.
The Phoolan Devi Murder: The complete coverage
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