Sources in the Kalina Forensic Sciences Laboratory have revealed that Rahul Raj, the youth from Patna who was killed in an encounter after he took over a BEST bus at Kurla and held passengers at gunpoint on October 27, was not shot at close range by the police.

“The forensics report is ready. It has been found that the shots were fired on Rahul Raj from a distance of at least 4 metres away. This clearly rules out the possibility of him being shot at from point-blank range,” said a source from the laboratory. The Mumbai Police Crime Branch, which is conducting a probe into the shootout, stated that it had not been handed the report yet.

When contacted, Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Deven Bharti said, “I do not want to comment on the results of the forensics report as yet, since it is yet to be received by us.” On November 6, a doctor involved in Raj's autopsy had stated that there were signs of blackening around the bullet wounds indicating that shots had been fired from a close range. The doctor retracted the statements the same day, and Crime Branch officials stated that the post-mortem report did not mentions such blackening.

According to the post-mortem report, there were five entry wounds on Raj's body – two on the scalp, and one each on the ear, chest and torso. In order to ascertain the distance from which the shots were fired, skin samples from around the entry wounds were sent for analysis to the forensics laboratory.

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