School Shootings Exported to India?

NEW DELHI, Dec. 12, 2007 — -- Two boys who said they were sick of being bullied opened fire in a school, killing a classmate, the object of their hatred, police say. They used one of their father's guns. And they are remorseless.

For the first time, the template of a U.S. campus shooting has been exported to the Indian capital.

The shooting occurred Tuesday afternoon in a private school in Gurgaon, a neighboring suburb of New Delhi.

Police say two boys, both 14 and in the eighth grade, took turns in broad daylight shooting their victim, 14-year-old Abishek Tyagi, sending five bullets through his head, chest, and shoulder.

But there are two major differences between this shooting and the more than 20 campus shootings that have occurred in the United States in the last 10 years: The boys didn't kill themselves, and they were allowed to speak to the media.

"We were completely disgusted with the behavior of Abishek," one of them told the Times of India. "He used to bully us frequently and had also threatened to kill us. So, before he could do that I thought of finishing him. My father had kept his licensed revolver in a TV trolley and it was locked. I took it out and hid it. On Tuesday morning, I smuggled it to school by hiding it in my socks."

Police say he hid it in a bathroom until the end of the day, when he and a friend confronted Tyagi outside a school bus.

"I don't feel we have done anything wrong. He used to behave as a don in the class. We wished to end his 'dadagiri,'" he told the Times, using the Hindi word for bullying.

This afternoon police say they are looking for Azad Yadav, the father of one of the boys and the owner of the gun, to arrest him for alleged reckless handling of his weapon. But he has disappeared.

Gun violence is very rare here, especially in a private school surrounded by upscale communities. The Euro International School, where the shooting occurred, is filled with well-to-do families, and the fathers of both shooters were successful real estate managers.

Gurgaon is a booming satellite town home located just on the outskirts of Delhi. It is marked by high-rises, filled with high-end stores and workers who answer phones for Western companies that have outsourced customer service operations to India.