HYDERABAD: A 29-year-old historysheeter, Mohammed Ilyas was murdered by his rivals at a gym in Santoshnagar under Kanchanbagh police station limits on Monday.
According to the police, Ilyas was a resident of Phoolbagh in Chandrayangutta.
Around 9.30 am, nine persons armed with swords and knives stormed into God’s Power Gym, stabbed Ilyas to death and fled from the spot. Police said that 10 criminal cases, including two murder cases, were pending against Ilyas in various police stations.
Task Force sleuths arrested Ilyas on February 9 in a murder conspiracy case.
He was a close associate of Rein Bazar history-sheeter Mohammed Fayyaz and a staunch rival of another history sheeter, Hamza Bin Omer alias Zaffar Pahelwan.
Police suspect that Zaffer Pahelwan is the prime accused in the murder case as he has been threatening Ilyas not to give evidence in an assault case booked in 2009 at Rein Bazar police station. Pahelwan also nurtured a grudge against Ilyas for getting him falsely implicated in Fayyaz’s gang member Salem’s murder case at Bhavani Nagar in May 2011. Following the murder, police raided the houses of Zaffer and his men but all of them had absconded.