The police have detained at least two persons in connection with the murder of Ananthu Girish, 21, at Karamana late Tuesday.
The crime came to light when Girish’s relatives launched a search for him after they found they could not contact him on his mobile phone. Officials said his family found his body in an empty plot of land near the Government Polytechnic for Women near Karamana.
Veins severed
Investigators said they found scores of injuries on his body. Some were blunt force injuries, and others inflicted using sharp-edged weapons. The attackers had also severed the veins on his hands and left him to die bleeding.
The police linked the murder to a fist fight between Girish and a gang led by one Kochu Gopan during a temple festival at Kaimanam. They said the fight could be a fallout of a local standoff between young addicts who also doubled as drug peddlers.
They said they suspected that Gopan’s gang had exacted revenge by kidnapping Girish and torturing him to death.
According to the police, a three-member armed gang kidnapped Girish from Thaliyil around 9 p.m. They forced him at knifepoint to climb on a motorcycle where he sat wedged between the assailants. The trio rode off to the remote locality near the Polytechnic campus where a gang of more than eight youths tortured him to death.