MADURAI: For those residing near Munichalai junction in Madurai, the Id celebrations ended on a gruesome note, after a 27-year-old man was hacked to death by a gang near the Karimsha Mosque a little before midnight on Saturday. The gang first threw a low-intensity country made bomb to scare away the victim’s friends, who were talking to him, and then executed the murder, police sources said.
The victim R Mohamed Yasin, from Nelpettai area, was working in a mobile phone shop, located a few metres away from the mosque, when the incident happened.
According to police, around 11:30 pm on Saturday, the gang, believed to be comprising of seven members, came in an autorickshaw and parked the vehicle near the mosque. After a few minutes, they hurled a country bomb near the shop where Yasin was talking with his acquaintances. While everyone tried to escape from the spot, the gang caught Yasin and hacked him.
As it was the day of Id, police personnel were deployed in all the mosques to avoid any untoward incident. On getting information about the attack, the officials in the nearby locality rushed to the spot within a few minutes. However, the culprits managed to escape by then.
Yasin was then taken to a private hospital nearby and later shifted to the Government Rajaji Hospital, but the doctors declared him dead on arrival.
Following this, the Madurai City Commissioner Shaileshkumar Yadav and Deputy Commissioner (Law and Order) Samant Rohan Rajendra inspected the spot and conducted inquiries. The footage of the CCTV camera fixed at the mosque have recorded the autorickshaw and the men coming out of the vehicle. But it did not cover the area where the murder took place, police said.
Yasin is the nephew of A Mannar Moideen (36), who was hacked to death in broad daylight in the same locality on January 21 last year. Moideen was charged in several criminal cases. He was allegedly murdered as a fallout of a dispute with a gang he once belonged to, police sources said. Yasin was vociferous about avenging the death of his uncle and police sources said that they suspect the same persons who killed Moideen to be behind this murder as well.