Youth beaten to death; Site engineers arrested for murder

CHENNAI: Eight persons including seven engineers at an under construction site of a government quarters in Saidapet were arrested by City Police on Tuesday for beating a youth to death for allegedly attempting to steal construction materials from the site on Monday night.

The victim was identified as Shahin Shah Kader (23), a graduate and a resident of Venkatapuram near Saidapet. On Monday night, Kader and his friends, Vinod (20) and Hemanathan (20) went to the site to steal the iron materials there.

Workers at the site caught two of them red-handed while Hemanathan managed to escape. The engineers at the site gathered and beat up Kader and Vinoth.

Hemanathan who fled from the scene informed the family members after which they rushed to the site and rescued the duo. Since both of them complained of uneasiness, they were taken to a hospital, where Kader was declared brought dead, a senior police officer said. Saidapet police registered a case and secured Kader's body and sent it to Government Royapettah Hospital for post-mortem. Vinodh is still undergoing treatment.

Site engineers, P Uma Maheshwaran (33) of Tuticorin, M Jayaram (30) of Rajapalayam, T Balasubramanian (29) of Namakkal, M Ajith Kumar (27) of Tenkasi, A Sakthivel (29) of Tiruvannamalai, V Nambiraj (29) of Tiruvallur, G Manoj (21) of Idukki, Kerala and a construction worker, Sivaprakasam were arrested by the Saidapet police on murder charges. All engineers were employed with a private contractor, police said. Further investigations are on.