BENGALURU: Mistaking them for cattle thieves, villagers thrashed a gang of eight students at Katakanapalya village in Ramanagar early on Monday morning.
The victims, who are injured, have been identified as Amruth, an MBBS student, Srikanth, an LLB student, Prithvi, an engineering student, Raghunandan, Vedamurthy and three others. All are residents of Bengaluru.
The eight friends had planned a long drive on Sunday night and left the city on Sunday night in Armruth’s Tata Safari SUV. After having dinner at a dhaba near Kumbalgod, they went to Manchanabele Dam and Saavanadurga Forest. While returning, they lost their way and stopped at Katakanapalya. As they were sleepy, they decided to stay there for the night and proceed in the morning.
“As there was a theft of 10 goats and two cattle in the recent past, the youth in the village were alert and were looking for thieves. Mistaking the students for thieves, around 20-25 villagers attacked them with wooden logs and assaulted them black and blue.
“Though the students requested the villagers that they were innocent and students, the villagers did not pay heed and assaulted them. The incident took place around 3.30 am,” the police said.
The police, who received information about the incident, rushed to the village. But the villagers were not willing to hand them over to the police. The villagers wanted to hold a panchayat and asked the students to pay for the stolen livestock. The villagers had tied the students to electric poles and made the police wait for an hour.
“We convinced the villagers and rescued the students. They were treated at a local hospital and later shifted to a hospital in Bengaluru. The legs of one of the students were fractured in the incident. The villagers have vandalised their SUV and stolen their mobile phones. “Pruthvi has filed a complaint and the accused will be arrested soon,” the Ramanagar Rural police, who have registered the case, said.
