Cash van driver injured in accidental firing

Second such incident in City since Monday

Two days after a bank customer was injured in an accidental firing by a security officer, a cash van driver was injured in the abdomen when the gun belonging to a security man, who was accompanying him, went off outside Axis Bank’s Koramangala branch on Wednesday.

According to the police, V S Mishra, 40, from Security Intelligence Service (SIS), allegedly pressed the trigger of his double-barrel gun after loading bullets, at around 9 am outside the bank.

Though the bullet hit the entrance of the gate, a few splinters hit cash van driver Harikrishna Mishra, said Aslam, the currency chest manager of Axis Bank.

 Mishra was immediately rushed to the emergency ward of St John's Hospital in Koramangala.

“Harikrishna is out of danger. However, we found a few fragments of the bullet inside his body during scanning and we will soon conduct a surgery on him to remove them,” the doctors treating him said.

Harikrishna, a native of West Bengal, is with SIS for the past couple of months. He is a resident of Chandapur at Anekal.

Koramangala police have arrested Mishra and registered a case against him.According to the police, Mishra has taken full responsibility for the accidental firing. In his statement he has said he loaded the bullet case and instead of raising the butt of the gun, he unwittingly raised its barrel.

 “My fingers must have mistakenly pressed the trigger, since the safety catch was not secured, the weapon fired one round that subsequently injured the driver,” he has said.

A native of Uttar Pradesh, Mishra has been in Bangalore for the past 12 years and is formally trained in handling arms.

He has worked for over eight years in various security agencies, SIS officials said.