It was premeditated murder, says father of slain engineer
MOB WAS APPARENTLY FUELLED BY RUMOURS OF CHILD KIDNAPPERS ON WHATSAPP
An air of shock, grief and dismay hung heavy at the Hyderabad home of Mohammad Azam, the software engineer who was lynched by a mob in Bidar district in neighbouring Karnataka on Friday.
Azam’s one-and-half-yearold son, unaware of the cruel turn of fate, mumbled in the lap of his grandfather Mohammad Osman as other family members tried to hide their grief.
A steady stream of people came to the small house in the congested bylane of Barkas, the Arab-dominated locality of Hyderabad.
Azam, 22, an employee of Accenture in the Hitech City, was part of a group of five young men, including a Qatari national, who came under attack from an angry mob in Bidar, on suspicion of being child lifters.
The crowd was apparently fuelled by fake news and rumours on WhatsApp and their misgivings were heightened by the fact that the Qatari national in the group had distributed chocolates to some of the kids on the road during his travel through the area.
“It was clearly a case of premeditated killing”, said Mohammad Osman, an employee of Indian Railways. “My son had pleaded with the mob and begged for his life. He tried to explain that they were visitors and not child lifters. But they still killed him”.
Osman and other family members want the government of Karnataka and police to ensure justice and stringent punishment to the killers.
“Nothing can bring back my son now. My family is destroyed. Our dreams are shattered. I don’t know what to do with this little boy, and a young widow. What will be their future? But one thing I want is severe punishment to those who caused this grave tragedy,” Osman said.
“What is happening to our society. Have people lost their mind. We heard about so many lynching cases in other places and now this has happened to us. People are behaving worse than animals,” Osman said, trying hard to control his tears.
Osman said he spent his entire income on getting his ■ three sons and a daughter well educated. Azam’s twin brothers Akram and Aslam are also software engineers and the two are employed by Accenture and Amazon. Their sister Fouzia is a graduate.
As it was a weekend for Azam, he along with three other friends had left home on Friday promising to return in few hours. He was accompanied by Qatari national Salham Eid Al Qubaisi, who was on a visit to Hyderabad to meet his maternal relatives, Noor Mohammad and another friend Mohammad Salman.
We panicked when Azam did not return and it was only in the wee hours of Saturday that somebody answered his phone to say that Azam was in hospital and there was nothing to worry about.”
Akram | Mohammad Azam’s brother
Anger over chocolates
Without revealing where the group was travelling to, Azam and his friends left for Bidar, 125km from Hyderabad, where the group was joined by another local friend, Firoz.
According to the account of the four survivors and the statement of the police the gory drama of lynching was preceded by the playful Al Qubaisi playing marbles with local kids in a village. Later the group left for a picnic spot in the vicinity and on the way he threw chocolates he brought from Qatar towards the kids from the moving car.
Even as they were parking their vehicle near a waterfall a crowd of local people surrounded them angrily asking them why they had given chocolates to their children. The local youth Firoz tried to explain but the mob was in no mood to listen and began attacking them with stones and sticks. Al Qubaisi, Azam and Salman managed to board the car trying to flee the mob while Noor and Firoz were left behind.
However, the speeding car fell off a bridge. The mob chased them and continued its attack. “Azam was dragged out of the car and beaten mercilessly. But Salman remained in the car,” Al Qubaisi was quoted as saying.
Still both injuries and suffered serious Al Qubaisi’s left hand was fractured. They could have met Azam’s fate if the police had not reached the spot in time and used force to disperse the crowd.
Meanwhile, Noor and Firoz managed to survive as their assailants became panicky seeing blood oozing from Salman’s head after somebody hit him with a stick. Salman and Firoz left the spot on a motorbike to reach the latter’s home and got medical aid.
“We panicked when Azam did not return and it was only in the wee hours of Saturday that somebody answered his phone to say that Azam was in hospital and there was nothing to worry about,” recalled Azam’s brother Akram.
It was only when they rushed to Bidar government hospital that they came to know of his death.
Admitted to hospital
Al Qubaisi and Salman were shifted to Hyderabad and admitted to a corporate hospital on Saturday while Azam was buried in Hyderabad.
Meanwhile officials from Qatar’s embassy in New Delhi rushed to Hyderabad. A shocked Al Qubaisi along with two of his family members immediately left for Doha while Salman’s family also got him discharged, to be treated elsewhere.