Tipsy gang of students beat up bike rider, held

CHENNAI: It was horror on the night road, when a four-member student gang attacked a bike rider with cricket stumps and knives, leaving him with cut injuries on the head and fractured fingers, at Kelambakkam on Sunday. The victim, who was taken to a private hospital in Perungudi, underwent plastic surgery on Monday.The police said the attackers studied in an arts and science college at Padur on East Coast Road, where a student from Manipur committed suicide recently.A former BCA student of the college, Ravindra Kumar (21), who is being treated as witness to the incident, told Express that he and his friend Naveen Kumar (25), an MBA graduate, were returning on their bikes from Kelambakkam to their house around 9 pm. The two men, natives of Bihar, were staying in a rented house at Palavakkam.At Padur, they were stopped by a four-member gang. Ravindra Kumar recognised them as Piyush Kumar, Ravi Kumar and Maheshwar, his juniors in the BCA department, and Ravi Kumar, a BBA student. All the four youth were from Bihar. “We did not stop and drove way,” he said.The duo halted at a restaurant to have dinner, when the assailants arrived. “They were drunk and armed with cricket stumps and knife,” Ravindra Kumar alleged. They pounced on Naveen, delivered deadly blows with the wooden stumps and the knife on his head, hand and body, and escaped. Ravindra Kumar rushed his profusely bleeding friend to a hospital in Perungudi, where doctors found that the victim had suffered fractures on two fingers. Ravindra Kumar lodged a complaint at the Kelambakkam police station. The police escorted him to the college, where he identified the attackers. Sub-inspector Anthony said the quartet had been picked up for questioning and an FIR would be registered soon.