Hyderabad: A soldier was brutally murdered by his elder brother after a drunken quarrel even as their children watched in Uppal on Wednesday night. Bandari Gangaratnam, an employee of the Survey of India, stabbed his younger brother Havildar Bandari Yesu multiple times on the road outside their home. The murder took place as Yesu’s children Resh-ma, 16, and Sandeep, 13, along with Gangarat-nam’s children Mounika, 12, and Manoj, 11, watched.
Police said Gangaratnam, 42, and Yesu, 36, had purchased a 100-sq. yd plot in Seven Hills Colony in Uppal in 2006 and built a house in 2008. Gangarat-nam owns a house in Pad-mavathi Colony in Uppal. Hav. Yesu would visit home once a year, and his brother would take care of both the families. Three years ago, Hav. Yesu had proposed selling their house and splitting the profit, to which Gangaratnam did not agree.
Hav. Yesu had come home on August 13. On Wednesday, the brothers and their children were at the Seven Hills Colony house, while the rest of the family was at the Uppal house. The children were playing and the brothers sat down to drink liquor. During the course of conversation, a quarrel broke out between the two after which Gangaratnam brought a knife from the kitchen and stabbed Yesu five times in the stomach and the back, and fled. The two were on the street at this time.
The children were playing in the house at that time and rushed to break up the quarrel, Hav. Yesu’s daughter Reshma said. They were brushed aside. When Gangaratnam emerged from the house with a knife, the children tried to stop him, but he threatened them. “Resh-ma immediately called her mother but it was over before the family retur-ned,” said Vijay Bhaskar, Hav. Yesu’s cousin.
