BELAGAVI: An unidentified group hacked a young Belagavi resident to death and threw his body on the railway tracks. The victim's body was recovered by the police with head and leg cut off from the railway tracks near Khanapur in Belagavi district on Saturday.
The police suspect that the victim may have been killed by members of a right-wing organisation who had accused the dead of seducing a girl from another caste.
According to the police sources, the body was found on September 28. Local farmers noticed the body and alerted the local railway authorities. A team of railway police personnel visited the spot and later the villagers identified the dead as Arbaz Mulla, 24 of Azad Nagar Belagavi who commuted from Belagavi to Khanapur occasionally to work. T
The victim's mother Nazeema Mohammad Gouse Sheikh, a government Urdu school teacher from Belagavi, has filed a complaint with Khanapur police station. She has named the girl with whom her son was said to have a relationship. She alleged that three persons killed her son as they did not like him having a relationship with a girl from another caste. They had threatened him not to continue the relationship as the girl belonged to a different faith, she said in the complaint.
Arbaz Mulla and his mother who stayed in Khanapur for several years had shifted to Azad Nagar, Belagavi two years ago. The girl also resided with her family in Khanapur.
Nazeema held the girl’s father, whose name she does not know, and two others responsible for the death of his son. According to her complaint, they kidnapped her son, took him to Khanapur and killed him.
"Once I learnt about the relationship, I shifted to Azam Nagar in Belagavi with my son. He was a dealer of second-hand cars. One of the accused had asked me to tell my son to stop seeing the girl and had threatened my son. They had snatched my son’s phone and deleted messages, videos and pictures before destroying his SIM card,’’ she said in the complaint.
She came to know about the incident after a railway guard called her from her son’s phone. She told journalists that her husband died of cancer three years ago and her daughter was living abroad. "I knew that my son was in love with a neighbour's daughter. I spoke to her mother to caution them. But the children were adamant. That was a few days ago. But I did not know that the issue would come to this stage,’" she told reporters in Belagavi.
After the preliminary investigation, the Railway police transferred the case to Belagavi district police. Speaking to TNIE, Superintendent of Police Laxman Nimbargi said, "The case is being handed over to the district police and we are looking into all angles of the offence and a team has been formed to apprehend the culprits. All those involved in the crime will be arrested soon.''