Over the last few days, a video in which the staff of a private bus operator can be seen brutally assaulting two young men inside a bus, has shocked Kerala.But now, a more damaging piece of evidence has emerged that clearly shows that after assaulting the two college students and another man in the bus, Kallada staff had attacked them further.
Manorama News aired CCTV visual from Vytilla junction which goes on to prove that the spine chilling account narrated by the two young men regarding what happened to them after they were thrown out of the bus was true. Sachin and Ashkar, (Btech students) and a man named Ajay Ghosh, who had boarded the Bengaluru bound Suresh kallada bus from Haripad on the night of April 20 had alleged that they had been chased through Kochi city and assaulted. The three had an ugly spat with the Kallada bus staff after the bus they were travelling in broke down.
In the CCTV visual, one can see a helpless Sachin lying on the road and begging four goons around him to leave him alone. The visuals were caught by a CCTV camera in Vytilla junction, one of the most important junctions in Kochi city.
The visuals show Sachin, first sitting on the floor and begging the goons, and then falling on the ground as one of them kicks him. All this while, one of them can be seen standing with a beer bottle in his hand, as if he is ready to hit Sachin with it.
All of this happened when Ashkar and Sachin tried to escape from the Kallada staff and ran in two different directions. But one group caught up with Sachin when he fell down exhausted near the junction.
When the men found out about the presence of a CCTV camera, they can be seen trying to move Sachin away from that spot to another location. At this moment, Sachin tried to escape but one of the goons manages to catch hold of him and hits him. A little while later, Sachin attempted another escape and finally managed to run for his life along the National highway in Vytilla. This incident took place around 5 am on April 21.
Speaking to Manorama News, Sachin said, “Even while the staff of Kallada were beating me, they kept saying that they will kill me.”
Speaking to TNM, Sachin, said that the entire footage would show more attackers.
“I have watched the whole footage. In that, there are altogether 8 people who are seen surrounding us. It also clearly shows me being hit with beer bottles. There are visuals of the bikes entering the road. In the clip that was released by the media, we can only see 4 of the men standing around me,” Sachin says.
Sachin also said that out of the 7 accused who have been taken into custody by the Maradu police, 2 of them are the drivers and the rest were the goons who entered the bus and pulled him out.
“There are at least 5 more people on the loose. If my memory is right, there were at least 12 or 13 people involved in the whole scene,” he says.
Background
A little after the journey began on the night of April 20, the Kallada bus broke down following which there was a scuffle between the duo and the staff of the bus. In the words of Sachin, the staff was “rude and unresponsive” when asked about whether they had any alternate solution to the problem.
Following this, the passengers had boarded another bus sent from Ernakulam and just when everyone thought that the situation had normalised, three other staff of Kallada travels entered the bus when it reached their Vytilla office during the early hours of Sunday and started assaulting the two young men. The video of this assault was recorded by a co-passenger. Following this, both Sachin and Ashkar, along with Ajay Ghosh, who had also questioned the driver and the staff were thrown out of the bus in Vytilla and attacked on the road.
Arrests
The Kerala police on Tuesday said that they had arrested all the accused in the case. The seven persons who have been arrested have been identified as 37-year-old Giri Lal, a native of Kollam, 27-year-old Vishnu, a native of Alappuzha, 55-year-old Kumar, a native of Coimbatore, 25-year-old Jithin, a native of Kodakara in Thrissur, 29-year-old Jayesh of Palikkal in Thiruvananthapuram, 26-year-old Rajesh of Alappuzha and 38-year-old Anwar from Puducherry.
Kallada Managing Director Suresh Kallada has said that his staff attacked the passengers in retaliation. He has alleged that the passengers had thrashed his staff, infuriatng one of them.