18-yr-old poses with a pistol for TikTok video, shoots himself in the head

An 18-year-old accidentally shot himself and died from a pistol while trying to shoot a TikTok video in Bareilly’s Hafizganj, according to police. The incident happened in Mudia Bhikampur village, they said.

The incident occurred at around 5 pm on Monday evening when Keshav Kumar, a student of Class 12th returned from college and asked his mother Savitri Devi to give her licensed pistol. “I refused at first but when he insisted and kept pestering me, I relented and gave him the gun,” the woman said adding that she was working in the kitchen when she heard the gun-shot. “I ran and opened the door and found my son lying on the floor in a pool of blood,” she said.

Bleeding profusely, the injured boy was rushed to a private hospital in Bareilly where the doctors declared him dead. Son of an army man, Kumar was trying to strike a pose of a soldier with a gun on his shoulder when the pistol went off and the bullet him on the right temple, according to his mother. A photograph of a soldier with a rifle on his left shoulder is pasted on one of the walls in his bedroom.

Kumar’s father Virendra is posted in Roorkee. According to his mother, Kumar was constantly changing his profile pictures and shooting TikTok videos and later posting them on his Facebook and Instagram accounts. Virendra Kumar had two children, Keshav and his younger sister Priyanshi. The mother has reportedly told the police that she had no idea that the gun was loaded or else she would not have given it to her son.

“The boy’s family has refused the conduct post-mortem. We have been told that the licence of the pistol is in the name of Savitri Devi and that it was kept in a closet in their bedroom,” said Yogedra Kumar, circle officer of Nawabganj police station.

He said the police were investigating the matter and an FIR would be lodged soon.