Accident and errors

"The owner of one of Bombay’s biggest wine shops was injured recently when he accidentally shot himself while cleaning his sports gun,” reported Mumbai Mirror (MM) on July 7, 2008, and then went on to identify him wrongly as "Zyrros” instead of Zorast Zend. Also, the weapon was not a rifle, as depicted in the panel illustration accompanying the report. It was a pistol, according to family sources. A sportsman, Zend has won many awards at the state and the national level for pistol shooting.

The family had planned a weekend trip to Lonavla and Zend’s wife was packing late on the night of July 4, 2008. Since it had been raining, Zend began to oil his pistol after removing the magazine, oblivious of the fact that there was a bullet in the chamber. His wife asked him to go to sleep and pushed the weapon aside. To stop it from slipping out of his hand, Zend grabbed the gun, accidentally pressing the trigger. The pistol went off, injuring him in the shoulder. A case of accidental shooting was registered with the nearby Azad Maidan Police Station and Zend was admitted to the Bombay Hospital where he received treatment for a few days before returning home.

With the police releasing the news to the Press, and with the inaccuracies in the newspaper report, the family’s trauma was magnified when all they sought was privacy during an unfortunate incident.