HYDERABAD: Death came calling before dawn for a cattle trader and two of his family after armed assailants barged into his Warangal home and hacked them to death over a business dispute early Wednesday. Six have been arrested.
Police said they found Chand Pasha, a cattle trader in Telangana, his wife Sabera Begum and her brother Khaleel Pasha lying in a pool of blood inside the house. A financial dispute in a thriving cattle business allegedly led Pasha’s younger brother Mohammed Shafi to killing the trio with help from five assailants.
Pasha and Shafi had been together in the cattle business for a long time. The brothers, however, were embroiled in a festering dispute over profitsharing, with Shafi suspecting Pasha of taking away handsome profits while burdening him with debts, cops said.
According to a complaint by the couple’s daughter Rubina, Shafi arrived at their LB Nagar house around 3am along with five others. The assailants opened the door using a battery-operated wood slicer and hacked Pasha, Sabera and Khaleel to death with sickles.
“The victims were sleeping inside their house at the time of the attack. Anticipating that the inmates might wake upon hearing the wood slicer’s sound, the accused, who came in an autorickshaw, kept the engine running and continued pressing on the accelerator to camouflage the break-in attempt,” Warangal commissioner of police Tarun Joshi told TOI.
On hearing the sound, however, Pasha and other members woke up and peeped through the window to find Shafi. “They tried to escape but the accused breached the door instantly and killed the trio present in the same room,” the officer said.
Hearing their cries, Pasha’s sons Fahad and Sameer — who were sleeping in another room — tried to intervene but were attacked too. Rubina, who was asleep with her twoyear-old daughter in a separate room, fled with the child to save their lives. Tenants residing in Pasha’s house rushed Fahad and Sameer to the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital where they are under treatment.
“All the six accused were inebriated at the time of the attack and have been taken into custody for questioning,” Joshi added.
