New Delhi: She is young, good-looking, fashionable, and has a penchant for waving around pistols on social media posts.
If you think she is a figment of the imagination of some modern day fiction writer, you would be wrong.
Meet Lady Don Zikra, arrested for the murder of a 17-year-old in the Seelampur area of northeast Delhi. The victim Kunal was brutally stabbed on Thursday evening, in what police believe was a revenge killing. The murder sparked off protest and nearly led to a communal strife in the sensitive area.
Who is Lady Don Zikra?
It seems that she runs the show, or at least part of it, in Seelampur.
The 22-year-old is separated and the mother of a two-year-old.
She previously worked as a bouncer for jailed gangster Hashim Baba’s wife, Zoya, and is alleged to be associated with the Shoaib-Mastan gang — a local criminal outfit known to operate in the area. Zoya was arrested in February this year for the murder of a businessman and gym owner.
Zikra has been arrested in the past for flaunting firearms on Instagram, where she boasts a following of 15,000. In many of her posts, she posed with weapons, allegedly to project gang-related bravado. Her channel Sher-ki-Sherni was later taken down.
The police say that she was released from jail just 10 days before Kunal’s murder. After her release, she allegedly instigated the two teenage suspects, also part of the Shoaib-Mastan gang, to carry out the attack on Kunal. Both are absconding.
It is suspected that the killing is linked to a stabbing incident that occurred in the same area in November last year. One of the accused was allegedly injured in that altercation and believed Kunal was behind it.
On Thursday evening, Kunal had stepped out to buy samosas and milk for his family. His grandmother had recently been discharged after a 10-day hospital stay, and he had returned from GTB Hospital just before the incident.
Moments later, he was cornered by the accused in a narrow lane near his home and stabbed multiple times. Locals had watched in horror, too scared to intervene.
