CHENNAI:A 36-year-old dog trainer was allegedly beaten with wooden logs and locked up in a room by his employer for failing to regularly report for duty leading to his sudden death on Wednesday. While the police said they were awaiting the autopsy report, the family and friends of the deceased M Mohan Rangam alleged that it was a clear case of brutal attack by John, who is running a pet shop at Ambattur.
“He (Mohan) was groaning in pain when his brother and I were taking him in an auto to hospital. I thought it could be just some ordinary pain. But realised they were a few of his last breaths only when the doctors at the hospital said he was already dead,” M Vasantha, Mohan’s mother, said while managing to control tears flowing down her sorrow- ridden face.
Mohan, who had studied only up to class XII and hailed from a family that lived in a cramped tiled-roofed house at Choolaimedu, managed to build his life out of love for pets. “When he was a little boy, a police SI was here and from him he learnt how to handle pets. Since then, he has been deeply involved in handling pets,” says Vasantha.
He was said to be an expert trainer of pet dogs and even handled pregnancy or any kind of health complications of pet dogs, which made him quite popular in the Choolaimedu locality and in pet lover circles. “So he was commonly called as ‘Naai’ (meaning ‘dog’ in Tamil) Mohan. “He has trained so many dogs and he was such an affable person that he has earned so many friends in the city,” said Raj Kumar, a close friend of Mohan.
The friendship he earned is what seems to have secured him justice. As his relatives felt that certain police officers were trying to hush up Mohan’s death as a natural death, nearly 300 of his friends assembled at the Kilpauk Medical College Hospital and at police stations on Thursday demanding a thorough investigation. “The doctors who conducted the autopsy told us that Mohan has suffered injuries almost all over the body. But a police inspector, even before the autopsy, was telling us that it was just a natural death,” said Mahesh, another friend of Mohan.
Mohan had himself told his mother before his death the he was severely beaten and locked up in a room for hours by John, who was angry with him for failing to report properly for work. He had managed to escape from the room and walked several kilometres to get help of another friend, and reached home in the wee hours of Wednesday. Only early morning his mother noticed him writhing in pain and took him to Kilpauk Medical College Hospital, after being advised by a local clinic.
While Choolaimedu police, in whose limits Mohan was residing, and Ambattur police, where the Mohan was allegedly beaten and locked up, initially dilly-dallied on deciding under whose jurisdiction the case would fall in, the Choolaimedu police finally registered a case of unnatural death after the frustrated relatives called the police control room. Their delay meant the family could get Mohan’s body, after completion of autopsy, only a day later, on Thursday evening.