RAJKOT: A petty dispute over whose daughter’s wedding was grander than the other sparked a verbal duel between two families on Sunday, resulting in the murder of a 45-year-old man in Sayla town of Surendranagar district.
The incident occurred in Vasuki Nagar Holidhar area of Sayla, where Himmat Pandya was fatally attacked with knives, swords, iron pipes, and sticks at 12.30pm on Sunday.
The victim’s elder brother, Prakash Pandya (52) lodged a complaint at Sayla police station against their neighbours — Naresh Aghara, his brother Girdhar Aghara, their family member Mukesh Aghara, and Naresh’s sons Rajan and Umang. Multiple police teams have been deployed to apprehend the accused, who are on the run.
Prakash, who has a wedding decoration business, stated in his complaint that the wedding of Naresh’s daughter took place on Jan 19, while his daughter Urvashi’s marriage was held on Feb 6. He stated that Naresh’s son Umang was jealous because of the lavish wedding of his daughter.
He alleged that Umang subsequently sent inappropriate messages about their family to Prakash’s son Gunjan, using his friend Akash Makwana’s mobile phone. He also alleged Umang also posted provocative statuses on the mobile phone.
The complainant stated that when Gunjan confronted Akash about these messages and statuses, Akash clarified that Umang was using his phone to send the messages and was responsible for the statuses.
On Sunday at 8.30am, Prakash went to Naresh’s residence and rebuked Umang for his behaviour, asking Naresh to counsel his son.
A few hours later, while Prakash was at his shop with his family, Naresh and his family members reached his house and started an altercation with Prakash’s younger brother Himmat. Those present there tried to intervene, but the accused assaulted Himmat and managed to flee. Himmat was transported to the govt hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Investigating officer R J Gohil said that the victim and the accused belong to the same community. Teams are using technical surveillance and human intelligence to locate the accused. A forensic postmortem of the deceased was conducted in Rajkot.