Youth’s ear cut off for refusing to give scooter in Bengaluru

BENGALURU:  A late night ride home after work, turned into a nightmare for a 21-year-old youth who was waylaid by a gang and had his ear chopped off after he refused to handover his bike or his cellphone to them. The incident occured on Saturday night and the gang is still at large. The victim, Vinod Kumar, works as a bar backup employee at a popular pub on Church Street. On Saturday, he was riding back home around 10.45 pm when he was stopped by a gang of six-seven men near in front of the 515 school at the Gun Troops Officers Colony in Halasuru. 

Kumar was first asked to hand over his Honda Dio to the gang who wanted to take it for a joyride. He refused and said that he was getting late and had to leave. However, they continued to block his way and asked him to drop them to Gundappa Park. “There were many of them and I told them that it was not possible as I would reach home late. Three of them caught me and asked me to at least give them money and they forcibly checked my shirt pocket,” Kumar said. 

“I told them I had no money, they asked me what I had and then they tried to snatch my mobile phone. I held on to it tight and asked them to leave me alone,” Kumar said. At this point, the gang members lost their temper and started assaulting Kumar. “I was angry and hit a couple of them. They then took out weapons and something that looked like a knife or a dagger and started attacking me,” Kumar said. 

Initially the gang hit Kumar’s head with the weapon and then his hands. “I tried to run away and they chased me and surrounded me. One of them hit my left ear with the weapon and I started bleeding and fell down. They continued attacking and I managed to get up and run towards Lido Mall and called my friend,” he said. 

At the hospital, the doctors managed to attach Kumar’s ear but advised him that he needs to undergo a surgery to fix the ear permanently. Kumar said that he had seen one of his attackers before at the Colony but did not know his name. “Few people kept calling him Chinnu when he was chasing me,” he said.

The next day, when Kumar went to the Halasuru police to file a complaint, he found his scooter parked at the police station. The cops explained that they had brought his vehicle to the station as they found it unlocked on the road.  “It looks like they wanted to rob him or might have been under the influence of drugs. They are at large and we are making efforts to nab them,” an investigating officer told The New Indian Express.