'My son begged, but mob was out to kill'

HYDERABAD: A day after a techie was lynched in Bidar, his heartbroken family has urged the government to take steps to curb the spread of baseless rumours online and offline. According to sources, Karnataka police on Sunday arrested 28 people who were part of the lynch mob and detained 32 others.

City-based techie Mohammad Azam, who worked for Google, was lynched by a mob at Murki village in Karnataka on July 14 following a series of messages shared on WhatsApp warning locals that child kidnappers were on the loose. Azam had stopped by to casually distribute chocolates to some children.

The father of the deceased, Mohammed Osman, a railway employee, is completely distraught after his son's death. "I demand strong punishment to the accused persons so that a message is sent to people who fall prey to such rumours. My son had begged the assailants to spare him and had even tried to reason with them, but the people had a pre-mediated design to kill," said the father amid inconsolable sobs.

"My brother was an IT engineer working with Google. His appearance never looked like a child lifter, but he fell victim to rumour mongers," said Mohammed Akram, Azam's brother.

Azam, who got married a few years ago, has a minor son who is now under the care of his uncle. On Saturday night, Azam's body was laid to rest at the Shaheen Nagar graveyard near Pahadi Shareef Dargah.

Azam's killing is the latest in a line of lynchings across India, with people either beaten up or killed on suspicion of being child abductors. This has prompted the government to ask social media operators such as WhatsApp to clamp down on rumours.

The three other survivors in the incident, Noor Mohd, Mohd Salman and Mohd Salham-eid-al-Kubaisi, a Qatari national, are undergoing treatment after being grievously injured in the mob attack. Salham, a police official in Qatar, was in Hyderabad on a holiday. He came to Azam's house on Friday and the duo, along with Mohammad Salman and Noor Mohammad, went to Handikera near Bidar to meet a friend.

On the way back to Hyderabad, the four stopped for refreshments at a shop near Balkut Tanda. On seeing some schoolchildren, Salham offered them chocolates that he had brought from Qatar. But villagers mistook them for abductors.