CHENNAI, April 29: A repeat of Sunday's incident, in which an unidentified man in his thirties was lynched and then burnt alive by a frenzied mob in Chenneerkuppam near Poonamallee, was averted, thanks to the timely intervention of the police on Tuesday.This time, however, the target was a mentally-deranged beggar who was mistaken by a motley crowd in Agaramel near Chenneerkuppam to be another AIDS-afflicted person on a "poking-spree".
According to sources, the Poonamalle police received a call at 2.30 pm on Tuesday from a resident of Agaramel stating that the public was found beating up a man. Thanks to the timely arrival of sub-inspector G Nalladurai, who incidentally was an eyewitness to the Sunday afternoon mayhem, another tragedy was prevented, police said. The man, at present, was lodged in Poonamalle police station.
On Monday night too, the police received a call from anxious people in Sembarampakkam stating two persons were found moving around in the area in a suspicious manner. A police team,which rushed to the place around 11 pm, stayed put in the place till 3.30 in the morning. However, the call proved to be a hoax. "Despite the possibility of a phantasmagoric public calling every now and then to report some strange event or the other, we are taking suitable follow-up action by rushing to the `spot' immediately. All steps are being taken to dispel the sense of fear from the minds of the public," a senior police officer said.
The police are now planning to project slides in theatres in the area asking people not to take law into their hands. Cryptic messages like AIDS does not spread through blood-filled syringe as the virus would die immediately on being exposed, and blood clotting leads to the death of viruses would also be displayed.
Distribution of pamphlets instructing people to hand over any suspicious looking person to the police without causing harm to him/her, special patrol in police jeeps fitted with public address system asking people not to believe in rumours are also beingplanned, police said.
Meanwhile, the post-mortem report of the man who suffered a fatal end on Sunday has stated that the still unidentified person died due to "anti-mortem burns" and not due to the blows rained on him by an angry mob. "The blows were not fatal, the man was still alive when the mob doused diesel on him and set him ablaze," a police official said.
The man measures 181 cm (a little over 6-feet) from head to toe. His blood has been preserved for chemical examination.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
