February 12, 2021
Rohtak, Haryana
Author: Anjali
On 12 February 2021, at around 9 pm, Jat College was completely packed with a crowd of hundreds of people, there was screaming everywhere.
Outside the college, only the ambulances and police vehicles, was pointing to a major accident.
The bloody game that was played in Mehar Singh arena, after that, only signs of destruction and death were left there.
This incident which happened in the Mehar Singh Akhara of Jat college started at evening around 6:30.
Manoj Kumar Malik, who was DPA in Jat College, Rohtak, was present in the arena on the day of the incident along with his wife Sakshi Malik and their 3-year-old son Sartaj
On the evening of the incident, Manoj Malik, along with his wife Sakshi and son Sartaj, came to the Jat College Akhada to give training to the players.
His wife Sakshi went to the ground and started practicing her athlete, her son was also with her.
At the time when Manoj Malik reached the arena, the other coach Pradeep Malik and Satish Dalal were already making the players practice, one of them, a female player Pooja Tomar, was also trying her tricks, then coach Satish Dalal started talking to Pooja Tomar about wrestling, here Manoj Malik and Pradeep Malik also started talking to each other.
After this, Pradeep Malik suddenly went to the upper rest house of the arena. There was already coach Sukhwinder in a room. Pradeep Dalal went to coach Sukhwinder’s room and started talking to him.
At that time many young people were practicing in the arena and loud music was playing, during this time Pardeep Malik got a call from someone and when he got up with the phone, suddenly Sukhwinder shot him in the head.
Pardeep fell on the floor as soon as he was shot.
Sukhwinder removed Pardeep Malik’s body from in front of the door and put it aside.
There was definitely a bullet, but due to fast music, no one knows who has fired the bullet and where has it gone?
Sukhwinder called the head coach Manoj Malik, who was downstairs in the arena, to the same room where he had just shot Pardeep Malik.
Sukhwinder, who was caught in the room by Manoj Malik, shot him in the head without saying anything and put him to sleep in death.
Sukhwinder also dumped Manoj Malik’s body in a corner of the same room.
After going out again, Sukhwinder also called coach Satish Dalal to come upstairs, whom Satish Dalal also came to the room, Sukhwinder shot him too.
Even after killing 3 people in a few minutes, Sukhwinder’s anger had not calmed down and there were no more places left to hide the dead bodies in that room.
That’s why Sukhwinder locked that room.
After that Sukhwinder’s next victim was female wrestler Pooja Tomar who was practicing in the arena. Sukhwinder called Pooja and told her that other coaches were asking her to come to a room in the arena to talk about something. As soon as Pooja reached that room Sukhwinder shot her too. Pooja died on the spot.
After killing Pooja Tomar Sukhwinder’s next victim was Manoj Malik’s wife Sakshi Malik.
Sakshi Malik was practicing in the arena downstairs, so he called out to Sakshi Malik saying that Manoj Malik is calling you, but Sakshi Malik had no idea that he had already killed her husband, Manoj Malik. After this, Sukhwinder called Sakshi to the same room in which he had killed Pooja. As soon as Sakshi entered the room, Sukhwinder shot her dead without saying anything.
Sukhwinder wanted to end Manoj Malik’s lineage because he had read in a newspaper that a son avenged his father’s murder after 20 years. That is why Sukhwinder did not want to leave Manoj Malik’s 3-year-old innocent child alive so that he could not take revenge for his father’s death later.
After killing Sakshi, Sukhwinder went downstairs and picked up 3-year-old Sartaj, who was playing in the arena, in his lap saying that his mother was calling him upstairs. After bringing him upstairs, Sukhwinder shot Sartaj as well.
Thinking Sartaj to be dead, Sukhwinder left that room. After locking both the rooms, he locked the main gate and entered the arena. After killing many people in the arena, Sukhwinder got down in his car and from there he went straight to the gate of Jat College where another coach of Mehar Singh Akhara, Amarjeet, had reached. He had called Amarjeet saying that he had to discuss something about the arena.
Sukhwinder tried to shoot Amarjeet in the head as he got out of the car, but the bullet hit Amarjeet’s face instead of his head.
Amarjeet ran towards the medical complex in an injured state. Sukhwinder thought that if he stayed there, he would be caught, so he left for Delhi in his car.
However, at the time when this incident happened, coach Manoj Malik’s uncle’s son Tony and maternal uncle’s son Vishal were also practicing with the other players. They all noticed that Manoj, Satish, Pradeep, Sakshi, Sartaj, Pooja had gone to Sukhwinder’s room, but even after a long time, no one had returned.
Thinking this, when some people went upstairs, they heard Manoj Malik’s son Sartaj crying from a room. When some wrestlers were called and the lock of that room was broken, then this heinous murder in the arena came to light.
After breaking the locks of both the restroom rooms, they found many bodies lying soaked in blood one after the other and Sukhwinder’s body was found lying there. Nothing was known but as soon as the matter was understood, some people informed the police about this murder and within a few minutes the police reached the spot but before the police arrived, Sakshi Pooja and Pradeep had died while Manoj Amarjeet Satish and Sartaj were still breathing so they were immediately taken to the hospital.
The doctors declared Manoj and Satish dead too.
The news of this incident that took place in this famous arena in Rohtak, Haryana spread like wildfire. In this accident, 7 people were shot, out of which 5 people died while Amarjeet and innocent Sartaj were seriously injured.
This incident was so brutal that SP Rahul also reached the spot with forensics.
Manoj Malik’s elder brother Pramod Kumar and other family members also gathered outside this bloody arena and by 9 o’clock in the night, the family members of all the deceased had reached the spot. After this, Manoj Malik’s brother Pramod Malik lodged a complaint. But a murder case was registered against Sukhwinder in the police station.
Meanwhile, injured Amarjeet told the police in his statement that Sukhwinder had shot at him too. After this, several police teams cordoned off the entire city, but Sukhwinder could not be caught by the police. SP Rahul Sharma formed special investigation teams under the leadership of DCP Narender Kadyan and DCP Vinod Kumar to catch Sukhwinder, the accused of the shooting incident in Jat College Arena, and also announced a reward of Rs 1 lakh on Sukhwinder.
The police came to know from Sukhwinder’s mobile location that he had fled from Rohtak to Delhi. After this, several teams were sent to Delhi in search of him.
The next morning, the post-mortem of all the five people was conducted.
In the postmortem it was found that all of them were shot from a distance of about 20 to 25 feet. The bullets did hit the heads of all but did not pass through. 2 bullets were recovered from the head of Sakshi Malik and 1 bullet each from the heads of the other 4 people. Apart from this, Amarjeet was hit by 1 bullet and 3-year-old Sartaj was also hit by 1 bullet which passed through his head.
The forensics team said that Sukhwinder had carried out this incident with a .32 bore gun. 9 mm bullets were found in the heads of all the dead people.
Here the condition of innocent Sartaj was very critical, so he was sent from Rohtak PGI to Pandit Bhagwat Dayal Sharma Health Organization and put on ventilator. Sukhwinder had shot the innocent between his eyes which passed through Sartaj’s head.
In the initial investigation it was clear that at the time of this incident there were other people present in the arena, but nobody heard the sound of bullets being fired in Sukhwinder’s room because of this Everyone did feel a mild explosion, but they thought that maybe firecrackers were being burst at a wedding.
But none of the people present in the arena had any idea that Sukhwinder had killed 5 people in the upper room.
When the initial interrogation was done with the people present in the arena, it was found that Sukhwinder was having a quarrel with the coach of the arena, due to which he had carried out this entire incident. When the police gathered information about Sukhwinder, it was found that Sukhwinder is originally from Baroda village of Sonipat.
After this, a police officer team immediately reached his house and interrogated his family members. It was found that Sukhwinder’s father is retired from the army, and he said that Sukhwinder is married. He was married 6 years ago to Tanu, a resident of Uttar Pradesh. He also has a 4-year-old son.
Sukhwinder was stubborn and short-tempered, so he started quarreling with his wife and 4 years ago he left his wife at her maternal home. Since then, she is living at her maternal home while his son lives with his grandparents. Sukhwinder’s mother Sarojini Devi told that due to Sukhwinder’s antics, his father evicted him from the property.
After which Sukhwinder used to come home to meet his son only occasionally. Police had put in all their efforts to catch Sukhwinder.
But on the day of this incident, i.e. on 13th February, Delhi Police caught a person roaming in a car in suspicious condition. Delhi Police also recovered 1 gun and 5 cartridges from his possession. On interrogating him, police came to know that the person named Sukhwinder who had killed 5 people in Mehar Singh Akhara of Rohtak a day before, is this Sukhwinder. After this, Delhi Police immediately informed Rohtak Police about this. On receiving the information, Rohtak Police reached Delhi. Rohtak Police brought Sukhwinder to Rohtak and presented him in the court and took him on 4-day remand. After that, police interrogated Sukhwinder strictly, but he could not hold on for long.
During interrogation, Sukhwinder said that he had killed not 1 but 6 people for lust and money.
Sukhwinder said that he had a rivalry with Manoj Malik for the last few months. Manoj and his wife Sakshi were famous players. Manoj was a national level wrestler in his time. He had also won many competitions. After this, he got a job as DPA in Rohtak’s Jat College and along with this, he also got a job as a coach in Rohtak’s most famous arena. Apart from Manoj Malik, there were many other coaches in this arena, one of them was Sukhwinder.
Manoj Malik did not even dream that Sukhwinder, whom he had hired two years ago for Rs. 15000, would kill him and become the reason for the destruction of his family. Sukhwinder used to harass the players in the field, so Manoj had removed him from the post of coach.
It was because of this that Sukhwinder got angry and carried out this incident. Another coach killed in this shootout, Satish Dalal, was originally from Jhajjar and
Pradeep Malik, who lived in Mokhra, was also a victim of this shootout.
Pradeep Malik was a railway CTI on sports quota. Pradeep has a married son who was only 15 months old at the time of this incident. Sukhwinder did not have any such quarrel with Pradeep that he would kill him. Sukhwinder had just advised him to behave properly with the players. It was because of this that Sukhwinder had developed a grudge against Pradeep Malik.
Wrestler Pooja Tomar, who was killed in the shootout, was a famous wrestler from Uttar Pradesh. Pooja was originally from Mathura. Pooja’s father and brother used to run a clothes shop. Since Pooja was a strong player, Pooja’s family had sent her to Mehar Singh Akhara in Rohtak for training one and a half year before the incident. Because the real reason behind this incident was Sukhwinder’s behavior with female wrestlers and his pressure on them to get into relationships. Pooja Tomar had also complained about Sukhwinder to her family and Manoj Malik, the coach. Pooja had told that Sukhwinder was harassing her and pressuring her to get married. After this, on the complaint of the family members, coach Manoj Malik talked to other coaches and decided that it would be right to fire Sukhwinder from the job.
Losing the job and the girl from his hands made Sukhwinder so mad that he hatched a conspiracy to kill all of them. During police interrogation, it was also revealed that he wanted to kill Manoj Malik’s entire family. After interrogation, the police presented Sukhwinder in the court from where he was sent to jail. The case continued and on 19 February 2024, the court considered this case as a very serious crime and sentenced the main accused of this murder case Sukhwinder to death