By IANS,
Bangalore : Army guards shot dead Mohammed Mukkharam, a 20-year-old student who was drag racing, early Sunday for intruding into the house of a brigadier and trying to escape when asked to surrender, a senior police official said.
“The youth was shot by the sentry in the compound of Brigadier P.S. Ravindranath’s house on the old airport road around 2 a.m. when he tried to jump the boundary wall instead of surrendering,” Ulsoor area police inspector M.K. Thammaiah told IANS.
Brigadier Ravindranath is the commander of the army’s Karnataka and Kerala sub-area.
The brigadier was present in the Flagstaff House with his family members when the incident happened, a defence spokesperson confirmed.
A bleeding Mukkharam was carried in a car to the St. Phelomena hospital in the early hours by two of his friends but he succumbed to the bullet injuries in stomach and abdomen.
“Mukkharam was declared dead by the hospital doctors, who refused to admit or attend to him as he had bullets in the body and it was a police case,” one of his friends told reporters.
The victim intruded into the brigadier’s bungalow in the high-security defence area when the mobile police squad on the night beat chased him for speeding on a motorbike in a drag race with friends.
“The traffic police at the end of the M.G. Road tried to stop Mukkharam’s bike by placing barricades across the road. Sensing trouble, Mukkharam managed to ride through the gap at the divider and turned towards the old airport road. When the mobile squad chased him, his bike skidded. In panic, he intruded into the brigadier’s house by scaling the compound wall,” Thammaiah said, quoting the sentries who were on duty.
By the time the police alerted the army sentry to trace the intruder in the sprawling area, Mukkharam managed to climb onto the rooftop of the single-storey house and lay there flat after hiding in the bushes and behind trees for a while.
“The sentry located the victim lying flat on the terrace and telling his friends on mobile in ‘colloquial Urdu’ to rescue him from there. When the guards asked him to get down and surrender, he jumped from the roof-top and began running.”
“The sentry first tried to stop him by firing in the air three times and shot him while jumping over the wall, mistaking him to be a terrorist,” said Thammaiah, who is investigating the case.
The police registered a case of trespass into the restricted area and an attempt to escape under sections 448 and 103 of the Indian Penal Code against Mukkharam on a complaint by the military police.
Mukkharam was a B.Com. student in a city college. His body was handed over to parents after the post-mortem examination at a government hospital.
Mukkharam was the only son of Mohammed Mustaq, a bus driver with a private transport operator in the city.
The police are on the lookout for Mukkharam’s friend who was riding pillion on the race bike.
City police commissioner Shankar Bidari told reporters that the victim tried to turn around and speed away when the beat constables asked him to stop.
“Speed racing or drag racing is dangerous to not only others, but also for those indulging in it. Public roads are not meant for this kind of adventure,” Bidari said.
City deputy commissioner of police (east) B.K. Singh said the police were trying to curb adventurous youth from indulging in motorbike drag race on some thoroughfares, as it was a menace to other road users and dangerous to their life and limb.
“We have been booking traffic violation cases against such offenders to put an end to this kind of dare-devilry. Police squads on night beat have intensified patrolling since the Mumbai terror attacks last month to check any unusual movements on city roads,” Singh added.