CHENNAI: A 21-year-old student of Presidency College, who was grievously injured after he was attacked by a group of Pachaiyappa’s College students at the Moore Market Complex last Friday, succumbed to his injuries at the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (RGGGH) early on Wednesday.
While clashes over ‘route rivalry’ have come to become routine, this is the first time that it resulted in a murder.
Five students of Pachaiyappa’s College, Eswar, Chandru, Kamaleswaran, Hariprasath and Yuvaraj, who were arrested by the Periamet police have now been booked on murder charges, said the police.
A Sundar of Ponpadi village near Tiruttani, about 100 km from Chennai, was a first-year BA Political Science student at Presidency College.
When he came to Chennai suburban terminal to board a train to Tiruttani around 2 am on Friday, a group of students from Pachaiyappa’s College rounded up Sundar and his friends, Surya and Dawood, and asked for their ID cards.
Sensing that they were in danger, Sundar and his friends tried to flee from the scene but Sundar tripped and fell. The rival college students surrounded and stomped on him repeatedly even as other passengers looked on in horror. When some of the onlookers tried to intervene, the youngsters threatened them. They dispersed only after the personnel from the Railway Protection Force (RPF) reached the scene.
"As a result of the assault, Sundar became unconscious and he was bleeding from his ears," Sundar's father E Anandan said in his complaint.
Police investigations revealed that the fatal attack was a result of 'route rivalry' among city college students. Perturbed by such incidents, DSP K Ramesh, a Government Railway Police (GRP) officer, on Tuesday made an earnest appeal to students of Pachaiyappa’s and Presidency College to show their bravado in studies and sports instead of expending energy on clashes with each other over their "ego" on ‘route thala’ supremacy.
"It is not justifiable to beat up a fellow student and render him hospitalised," DSP Ramesh said on Tuesday, a day before Sundar's death. "Times are changing. Under the new laws, it is not necessary that there should be eyewitnesses; CCTV footage is enough. We are keeping a close watch on all the erring students," the DSP said.