Mehar effect: Tease protestors kill boy, get bail

WHILE MEHAR Bhargava lost her life for taking on eve-teasers, a lawyer fatally attacked a teenaged eve-teaser with a chopper in Manak Nagar on Wednesday night.

Condemning the role of police for mishandling cases of eve-teasing and apathy in the Mehar Bhargava case, the court granted bail to the accused Sudhir Kumar Srivastava and his brother Sushil Kumar Srivastava, who too was involved in the assault.

Sandip Kumar (17) had been allegedly trailing Sudhir’s 14-year-old daughter for the past few months. The boy used to pass lewd remarks at the girl. Sudhir was annoyed with Sandip and had ticked him off on several instances. The matter had also reached Sandip’s mother, who discussed the issue with Sushil’s wife about two weeks back. She had requested Sushil’s wife not to take action against Sandip as she had admonished her son for his misdemeanours. But Sudhir had no intention to let Sandip off the hook.

Late on Wednesday evening, the two brothers were returning to their Chitra Gupta Nagar residence on a scooter. Sushil stopped the vehicle on seeing Sandip. Sudhir pounced upon Sandip, hurled expletives and started beating him brutally. When Sandip tried to overpower Sudhir, Sushil joined his brother in the brawl.

The duo assaulted the teenager, leaving him critically injured. But, Sudhir still had a score to settle with the boy. He ran into his house and returned with a chopper in his hand. Before onlookers could gauge the situation, Sudhir attacked Sandip hysterically. He chopped off Sandip’s fingers and struck on his neck, causing excessive bleeding. A shell-shocked Sushil somehow managed to overpower his frenzied brother and took him away. A profusely bleeding Sandip was later rushed to the KGMU Trauma Centre. There he succumbed to injuries in the wee hours of Thursday.

However, Sandip’s father Subodh Kant, a junior engineer with the Railways, feigned ignorance about the motive behind the violent attack.

The cops arrested Sudhir and Sushil today and produced him in the court. There the defence lawyer argued that, “This is a case of self-defence because the boy had forced them to take the action.”

The judge heard him, made his observation and granted bail to the brothers.