Ponty Chadha killing: Two warring brothers & a united family

Family cremates Ponty and Hardeep side-by-side, all members wait till Ponty's body is released after 2nd post-mortem

For a family that had been torn apart with two of its members training their guns on each other, the Chadhas and their well-wishers put up a calm and united front for several hours.

Close to a hundred of them waited patiently outside the AIIMS mortuary from 10 am on Sunday, waiting for the procedure to end, so that Gurdeep Singh Chadha alias Ponty and his younger brother Hardeep could be taken home one last time.

At 4.15 pm, very peacefully the two bodies were put on ambulances adorned with flowers and everybody left for the Chhattarpur farmhouse, the residence of the two brothers.

Two hours later, the entire entourage was back. But the calm had given way to anger.

Alighting from their cars at 6.30 pm at AIIMS, angry family members narrated stories of how the ambulances never reached the farmhouse. They were stopped metres away by policemen who said bullets were still lodged inside Ponty's body.

Chadha's son, angry at the to and fro, was heard speaking to policemen. "How have you let this happen? People have been waiting at the crematorium for hours because we were supposed to take the bodies there after Chhattarpur. And now you tell us that we have to come back here because the post-mortem examination is not complete? We will wait here for one hour, and then we will go to the crematorium," he said.

Police officers tried to explain that "it was part of their investigation". "Please try and understand. We cannot allow the body to be cremated with bullets still in his body," an officer said.

Fearing anger might trigger violence, constables lined up near the mortuary, stopping anyone but close family from going through.

... contd.

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