Hyderabad, September 02: On August 25, 18-year-old youth Mir Iqbal Ali was killed in Al Jubail Colony in Chandrayangutta. The reason: He asked Abdul Hameed to return his friend’s mobile he had taken for repair. Abdul Hameed, the 24-year-old mobile technician, dodged Ali for a while but when Ali mounted pressure, he knifed him to death. Murders over petty disputes is on the rise and in the last three weeks alone, at least six persons were done to death due to minor issues in the Old City.
In one such case, Mohammed Tayyab Ali, an autorickshaw driver had a running dispute with his wife whom he had deserted after nine years of marriage. In a fit of rage on August 26 he went to her parents’ house in Bada Bazaar, Barkas, and attacked her.
When her mother intervened, she too was attacked and killed. In another gruesome incident, Mallesh, a daily wage earner, brutally attacked his infant stepson Abhishek and smashed him to death on August 21. At the time of marriage with Shailaja he had promised to raise Abhishek.
But incidents took a cruel turn and he killed the 10-month-old baby. He even tried to hush up the murder by threatening Shailaja of dire consequences. The locals who noticed the absence of the infant with the couple complained to the police. The police investigated the matter and discovered the killing. “Though there are different reasons, one thing is clear.
All of the victims as well as the assailants are from economically poor backgrounds with hardly any education,” deputy commissioner of police Vineet Brij Lal said. He also blamed the high density of population in slums or poor neighbourhoods for increasing frustrations among people leading to fatal attacks on each other. Maulana Mohammed Anwar Ahmed, a senior faculty member with Jamia Nizamia, said religious leaders should come forward to counsel the public against anger and its dangerous consequences.
“We cannot expect the necessary change to come about by giving khutba (sermon) alone. The contact between ulema and people has to increase,” the Maulana who also runs an Islamic counselling centre said. The deputy commissioner said he would soon commission a socio-economic survey of the Old City to find out the actual causes of fatal violence and ways to correct the situation.
–Agencies