Seven youths were today arrested and two juveniles apprehended in connection with the death of a 17-year-old student, who was killed in Old City allegedly in a mock street-fight with another youth on May 3, police said.
Mohd Awaiz alias Owais Patel and six others, some of them students, were arrested today while two juvenile boys were apprehended in connection with the killing of Nabil Mohammed, Deputy Commissioner of Police (South Zone) V Satyanarayana told reporters.
According to police, the youths, including the deceased, were all close friends. Owais always tried to dominate his friends by way of his adamant behaviour.
On the day of the incident, the group of friends gathered in Panjesha area and Owais had a fight with two other youths and defeated them. On instigation of Omer Baig and others, Owais and Nabil got prepared to fight, the DCP said.
During the "friendly" fight which was videographed, Owais attacked and punched Nabil on his body and particularly on his head, following which Nabil collapsed and died, the senior police officer said.
The friends then got Nabil shifted to a nearby hospital where the doctors declared him dead, he said.
In order to conceal the facts, all of them concocted a story on the instigation of Omer Baig that Nabil died in a bike accident while doing stunts and believing the version of the accused, Nabil's family buried his body, police said.
Later, Nabil's father got some doubt about his death and lodged a complaint with Mirchowk police and a case of suspicious death was registered.
In the meanwhile, the video footage recorded on a mobile phone by one of the youths went viral on social media and was also shown on TV news channels.
Accordingly, on May 11, Nabil's body was exhumed and a post-mortem was conducted. Based on preliminary report, it was revealed that Nabil's body had multiple injuries including on his head, the DCP said.
Based on the post-mortem report, the sections in the case were altered to 302 (murder), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender) and other relevant sections of IPC, he said.
"The youths became vagabond (irresponsible) due to lack of parents' supervision. Only due to their recklessness and personal ego, this incident occurred," the DCP said.
It is learnt that parents of some of the youths had information about the incident even before filing of the case and intentionally overlooked it and this amounts to wilful concealing of the facts, he added.
