Of gold smuggling, shooting & gang wars: Teen’s airgun triggers all the drama in Kasaragod

Kasaragod: What began as a mystery shooting that sent shivers through Uppala -- the border town long used to gang skirmishes, kidnappings, and shootings linked to gold smuggling -- ended with an unlikely culprit: a curious 14-year-old boy and his father’s airgun.

On Saturday evening, between 5.45 and 5.53 pm, a bullet hit the balcony glass railing of NRI Aboobacker Siddik’s house in Uppala’s Hidayath Nagar. The glass cracked. His elder son, Ismail Sinan (25), who filed the complaint Sunday evening, told police that someone had fired at the house, causing damage worth ₹25,000.

By 9.45 pm, police had registered a case under serious sections of the Arms Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita -- provisions usually invoked when firearms cause damage to life or property.

As soon as the complaint was filed, news channels went to town, suggesting that a Kozhikode-based gang had recently visited Uppala over a gold transaction gone wrong. The recent death of a gang member from Mangaluru at Uppala only thickened the plot.

Manjeshwar Station House Officer Inspector Ajith Kumar P said the serious sections were invoked because the complaint appeared grave, and because it happened in Uppala. “But we did find five airgun pellets in the balcony,” he said.

Police took no chances. Officers scoured CCTV footage, questioned neighbours, and probed possible links to local gang wars. “No one saw any suspicious car in the area around the time the shots were fired,” said the inspector.

Late Sunday night, the boy realised his narrative had gone out of hand and revealed the truth.

When no one was home Saturday evening -- his father in Qatar, mother away at a wedding, sister at work in a pharmacy, and his brother in Mangaluru -- the 14-year-old boy took his father’s airgun and started toying with it “just for fun”. The pellets hit the balcony glass and shattered it. Panicked by the damage, he phoned his elder brother with a made-up story about “men in a car shooting at his house”.

Later, when TV channels aired reports of gang wars and gold-smuggling links, the boy panicked again and confessed to what had really happened, said the inspector.

In the end, it was just a boy scared to own up to his mistake, not the mafia. Police said the case would be closed as a mistake of fact. “We could have booked him for misleading the police and wasting our time, but since he’s a juvenile, we let him off with a warning,” Ajith Kumar said.