Two men, who had claimed responsibility for the attack on JNU student leader Umar Khalid and said that they would surrender at a village in Punjab, did not show up on Friday, police said.

A team of Delhi Police’s Special Cell visited the village of Sikh revolutionary Kartar Singh Sarabha where the duo, Darwesh Shahpur and Naveen Dalal, had said they would surrender.

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A senior police officer said the two did not turn up there and have not been seen in their native village Jhajjar in Haryana for the past few days.

In a video uploaded on Facebook on August 15, the duo claimed the attack on Khalid was supposed to be an “Independence Day gift” to the citizens.

Police are verifying the authenticity of the four-and-half-minute video and trying to trace the IP address from where it was uploaded.

In the video, the two men, one of them holding the Indian Tricolour, can be heard saying they would surrender at the house of Sikh revolutionary Kartar Singh Sarabha on August 17.

“By attacking Khalid, we wanted to give a gift to the people on the occasion of Independence Day. We respect our Constitution. But there is no provision in our Constitution to punish mad dogs. By mad dogs, we mean the JNU gang that is making the country weaker and their number is increasing. Our elders in Haryana have taught us that such people should be taught a lesson,” Darwesh Shahpur had said in the video message.

“Our message to all our fellow Indians is that we have done this attack not for ourselves, but for the entire nation. We do not care even if we lose our lives for this. We will not let terrorists like Afzal be born in this country,” one of them says towards the end of the clip.

On Tuesday, the Delhi Police handed over the case to its Special Cell, which incidentally is already probing a sedition case against Umar Khalid and two other JNU students.

Khalid was allegedly attacked on Monday outside the Constitution Club of India where he was scheduled to attend an event. The accused had fled after the attack, leaving the weapon at the spot. According to the police, his accomplice was waiting for him in a vehicle at a distance.

The police have collected CCTV footage from the spot, and are said to be trying to match the photo of the two persons in the video with the alleged attackers seen in the footage.

(With agency inputs)