Youth stabbed to death on Deepavali near Bengaluru over digital transfer of photos

An 18-year-old youth was stabbed to death allegedly by a group following an altercation triggered after a photoshoot at a ‘dhaba’ near Doddaballapura in Bengaluru Rural district here, police said on Monday.

At the ‘dhaba’ entrance, there’s a wall which has paintings to attract customers and a lot of people usually visit there for photoshoots. On Deepavali, when Surya and three of his friends were clicking their photos, another group who had lunch at the ‘dhaba’ arrived there and asked them to take theirs as well on Sunday evening. Surya and his friends initially refused but later agreed to do so, a senior police officer said.

The group then asked Surya and his friends to transfer the snaps to one of their whatsapp numbers immediately. But Surya told them that it cannot be sent to mobile phones directly since they had to be downloaded and transferred to the system first as these were taken using a camera. But the other group kept insisting they transfer the pictures immediately. This led to an altercation between the two groups and one of the accused, who has been identified as Dileep, took out a sharp-edged weapon and stabbed Surya in the chest, he said.

Surya, who collapsed on the spot, was rushed to a nearby hospital where he succumbed to stab wounds. The accused group fled the place on their motorcycles, he said.

”A case of murder has been registered in connection with the incident. Statements of the victim’s friends have also been recorded. We have identified two of the five accused involved in the incident and efforts are being made to identify the rest and arrest them,” Superintendent of Police (Bengaluru Rural district), Mallikarjun Baldani said.