COIMBATORE: The sun will dawn upon the city tomorrow too, and life will continue as usual. However, in a tiny part of the megacity, there will be a small family trying to come to terms with the death of a 20-year-old, whose life was deemed worth less than a mobile handset worth only a few thousand rupees. Tamil Selvam (20) was stabbed to death by a gang for resisting its attempt to snatch the handset.
Tamil, a third-year engineering student, was returning home late on Saturday night (11.30 pm) after completing a college project. He was half a kilometre away from his house at Sadasgyan Thottam in Arasur when a gang waylaid him on Saravanampatti road. Three persons on two bikes attempted to snatch his handset. Tamil resisted and raised an alarm. It was then that a gangster stabbed him on his chest, leaving him bleeding profusely. An injured Selvan reached home, and was rushed to a hospital, where he was declared dead on arrival.
Within 30 minutes of the attack on Tamil, another youth was reportedly stabbed by a three-member gang about half a kilometre from the scene of the first crime. K Mahalingam (25), of Vasantha Nagar in Arasur, was riding a bike on Thennampalayam-Annur road when the assailants intercepted him on the pretext of asking an address. While he has helping them out, they attempted to snatch his handset. When he resisted, they stabbed him on the back and fled with his bike and mobile handset. The special teams were sifting through CCTV camera footage and cell phone tower dump from the surrounding areas to zero in on the suspects.