The price of questioning is often very high.
It was only two months ago a motorist who questioned members of a political party on ‘why should general public suffer for your protest’ was assaulted in full public view in Nungambakkam. And, on Tuesday, a software engineer who tried to intervene in a gang war at Velachery allegedly between an MLA and his (MLA’s) relative, was killed.
Chandrasekar Kulkarni (32) left his office in Olympia Tech Park, Guindy, a little early on Tuesday afternoon as he had promised his four-year-old daughter and wife that he would come home around 5 p.m. and celebrate Deepam with them and go out for a family dinner.
On his way home, Kulkarni went to a TASMAC bar on the Velachery Bypass Road and was sipping his favourite whiskey. A gang of over 10 armed men barged in around 3.30 p.m. and started ransacking the bar and assaulting customers and staff. “Kulkarni questioned the unruly men. They hacked him to death,” said an investigating officer.
Kulkarni was a computer engineering graduate from North Maharashtra University in Jalgaon, and his family originally hails from Nashik. He came to the city six years ago when he got a job in an ICT company in T. Nagar. From 2006, he worked as an analyst at Verizon Data Services, a company that has offices in Olympia Tech Park and Perungudi here. A friend of his said, “He was an extremely nice and friendly guy. He used to frequent only this particular shop and knew the staff well. Maybe that is why he got agitated when the goons abused them.” His daughter is a KG student in a school in Velachery.
Police sources said the attacks were part of an attempt by a local AIADMK MLA and his group to gain control of bars, including the one were the killing took place, from his relative. Six persons were arrested till Thursday.
Sadly, Kulkarni’s waiting family knew about his unfortunate fate only three hours later when mediapersons went to his ground floor apartment in Anna Nagar, Velachery looking for his photograph for publication.
On September 21, 2012, Sundar (43), a carpenter from MGR Nagar, was caught in traffic near Loyola College following a protest organised by a political party. A simple question to protestors on why general public is being held up during their protest ended up in him being brutally assaulted by the partymen in front of policemen and mediapersons. A petrified Sundar did not lodge a complaint but police tracked him down and later arrested the attackers.
