Woman's wrist chopped off for intervening in brawl

Mistake her for relative of their target; docs fix her hand

Four men chopped off the wrist of a 23-year-old woman in KG Nagar, off Magadi Road on the outskirts of the City on Thursday night, mistaking her for the relative of a man they were looking for.

In a swift action, doctors at Sri Lakshmi Hospitals on Magadi Road re-attached the wrist and the victim is  doing fine now. “It took about five hours for a team of plastic surgeons and ortho surgeons to perform the procedure,” said Dr Giridhar M L, medical director, Sri Lakshmi Hospitals. The patient, Mangala Gowri, was brought to hospital within two hours of the attack which made it possible to perform the surgery.

The police said Gowri’s left wrist was chopped off. Her husband Raghavendra and her mother-in-law Doddamma suffered severe injuries in the attack. Two of the attackers have been identified as Krishna of Kunigal and Sandeep of Battarahalli. Both of them are into sand business. They had a business rivalry with a certain Nanje Gowda. Sandeep asked Gowda to supply sand at a lower price, saying he was constructing house. Gowda and his brother-in-law Kumar disagreed with that proposal. A spurned Sandeep then plotted with Krishna and two others to kill Gowda.

Krishna, Sandeep and two others went looking for Gowda, who was a tenant of Raghavendra (Gowri’s husband). But Gowda had recently got married and shifted to Sunkadkatte and Kumar was residing in that house, said the police.

The police further said that around 8.30 pm, the four men went to Raghavendra’s house and asked for Gowda. Gowri told them that he had moved out. However, they barged into the building and went to the house where Gowda used to reside earlier. They found Kumar there.

They dragged him out and started assaulting him. When Gowri intervened, one of the men hit her with a machete, chopping off her left wrist, leaving it hanging from her hand.

Hearing her screams, her husband and mother-in-law rushed to her rescue, but they too were assaulted with the machete. The assailants mistook Gowri and her husband for relatives of Gowda and attacked them, the police said. Neighbours and passersby rushed to the spot and called the police who took the injured to hospital.