Boys remanded over India shooting

Abhishek Tyagi was killed on the spot

Two teenage Indian boys have been remanded in custody accused of killing their classmate at a school near Delhi.

Police say the boys took turns to fire shots at 14-year-old Abhishek Tyagi at the privately-run Euro International school in the suburb of Gurgaon.

Police also want to talk to the parents of the boys but have so far been unable to contact them, reports say.

Incidents of gun crime at schools and colleges in India are very rare. It is not clear what prompted the shooting.

Gun questions

The school, which has 550 students and 38 teachers, has said it could not have foreseen what happened.

It has been closed for two days following Tuesday's fatal shooting.

The BBC's Soutik Biswas in Gurgaon says school authorities he spoke to say they knew of no reason why the boys might have wanted to kill Abhishek Tyagi.

"They had small tiffs with the boy in the past, but nothing serious was reported to us," school chairman Satyavir Yadav told the BBC.

Both boys, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were remanded in juvenile custody for 14 days by a judge on Wednesday.

Children recall shooting horror

Senior police officer Satish Balan told the BBC that they had not made any headway in investigations.

"The inquiry is on and we are trying to get details," he said.

Mr Balan said they were trying to trace the parents of the two boys being questioned.

Police say they believe one of the boys managed to smuggle his father's gun into the school and hid it in a toilet.

After school closed for the day, the boy and one of his friends retrieved the gun and took turns to fire five shots at their classmate, killing him on the spot, Gurgaon police commissioner Mahendra Lal told the BBC on Tuesday.

'State-of-the-art'

Euro International school in question is located in sector 45 of Gurgaon, one of a number of satellite towns around Delhi experiencing booming property and business expansion.

The school's website describes it as one of Gurgaon's top schools. It says it is a "state-of-the-art environment" and has CCTV cameras installed in all classrooms.

Private schools have sprung up in suburbs around Delhi in recent years catering for children of rich farmers, property developers and businessmen, among others.

Despite India's stringent gun control laws, a number of recent feuds over property deals in suburbs such as Gurgaon have been settled with firearms.