Youth pays with life for making advances to 'lover'

A young man paid with his life for making overt advances to a girl he was “madly in love with”.

Angry at 20-year-old Shivashankar Reddy’s “audacious” overtures to Shwetha, the girl’s younger brother and fiancé, along with two others, allegedly abducted and assaulted him with lethal weapons and fled, leaving him “half-dead” at HSR Layout here on Wednesday night.

Reddy succumbed to injuries and was declared brought dead at a private hospital. Within hours of the alleged murder, police arrested the four suspects — Ramachandra, Shwetha’s brother, Ganesh, her fiancé, and Kiran and Shiva, the former’s associates.

The victim, a salesman with a private mobile service provider, was returning home, along with his colleague Prashanth, when his “girlfriend” Shwetha met him outside a KFC outlet in 4th Sector, HSR Layout, around 7 pm.

Prashanth stepped aside in order to give the “couple” privacy. At this juncture, an autorickshaw arrived and Reddy got into it and the three-wheeler sped away.
Prashanth told police he waited at the place for more than an hour but Reddy did not come back. So he went near their office, hoping to find him there.

A while later, Reddy came to office in a severely battered condition — he had wounds on the head and other parts of the body and was bleeding profusely. He was rushed to a private hospital where he was declared brought dead. Reddy reportedly told Prashanth that he was abducted and assaulted by Ramachandra and Ganesh before being dumped near the office.

HSR Layout police are now on lookout for two other men suspected to be involved in the crime. Police claimed Ramachandra and Ganesh tried to teach Reddy a lesson as he was harassing Shwetha and making advances to her although she had spurned him.

Shwetha had even complained to Ganesh that Reddy was harassing her on the mobile phone. A furious Ganesh then asked Reddy to stay off his sister. Reddy, however, shrugged off the “warnings”, police sources explained. Meanwhile, Shwetha was engaged to her distant cousin, Ganesh. He too got furious when Shwetha confided in him.

A police source said that Ramachandra and Ganesh then “conspired” with Shwetha and made her to call Reddy up. She asked him to meet her near KFC outlet.

Overjoyed that his “hard work” was finally paying off, Reddy turned up at the appointed time and place only to be abducted and assaulted to death.

Police sources said the gang just wanted to scare Reddy and did not intend to beat him to death. He, however, could not bear the injuries and died.