The family of a 25-year-old Lucknow auto-rickshaw driver who died of injuries suffered during Thursday’s protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act said on Friday that eyewitnesses had told them he was shot by a police sub-inspector.

Authorities at the King George’s Medical University, who had on Thursday declined to reveal the nature of the wound suffered by Mohammad Vakil Ahmad, on Friday accepted that he had had a “firearm injury” in his abdomen.

The hospital also accepted that two other patients —schoolboy Mohammed Gilani, 15, and day labourer Mohammed Shamim, 20 — had been admitted with “firearm injury” on Thursday.

Uttar Pradesh director-general of police Om Prakash Singh has said the police did not fire during Thursday’s protests.

“My brother had gone to a medical store to buy medicine for his wife, Shumma Khatun, who is pregnant. He was shot while returning,” Vakil’s younger brother Taufiq Ahmad said at the family’s home in Daulatganj. “A young man who took him to hospital with the help of two constables told me that my brother was shot in the abdomen by a sub-inspector near Satkhanda police outpost.”

Taufiq said that this was the reason that an angry crowd of protesters torched the outpost. Vakil was the eldest among five brothers.

His mother Nagma Khatun said: “My innocent son was killed by the police. He had nothing to do with the protest. He didn’t even have an opinion on these issues as he had no time for it.”

Gilani had left home to visit his maternal grandmother on Thursday “because the schools were closed and he wanted to enjoy the day”, his father, Mohammad Naeem, said.

“Two young men who took him to hospital said he was on his bicycle when he suffered a bullet injury and fell on the road,” Naeem said.

“They didn’t know who shot him. They said the police were firing in the air but some people in the crowd too were carrying firearms.”

Shamim’s father Mohammad Wasim said: “My son was shot in the abdomen and left leg while returning home from a construction site, where work had been suspended because of violence in the city. We don’t know who shot him.”