An 18-year-old Sri Lankan Tamil refugee was killed in a hit-and-run in the Koyambedu area of Chennai in the early hours of Sunday, May 31, after a bar brawl spilled out onto the street, Newswire reported on Sunday, citing The News Minute.
The deceased, identified as Yancy, suffered fatal head injuries after being knocked off a motorcycle by a car allegedly driven by one of the men involved in the earlier altercation. A 17-year-old girl travelling with Yancy was injured and admitted to hospital. Seven people have been arrested in connection with the case.
Police said the trouble began as a scuffle between two groups inside a Koyambedu bar on Saturday night. Security personnel intervened and escorted both groups out, but the dispute continued on the street. Investigators allege that some of Yancy’s friends, riding motorcycles, pelted stones at a car carrying members of the rival group — named in reports as Balakumar alias Balaguru and Suman Sakthivel — damaging the vehicle.
In retaliation, Suman Sakthivel is alleged to have driven the car into the motorcycles, throwing Yancy onto the road. Yancy died at the scene. Koyambedu police, working from CCTV footage, arrested Balakumar shortly after; on questioning, he told officers that Suman Sakthivel had been driving when the car struck the motorcycles, according to police. The investigation is continuing.
Ada Derana, citing the Times of India, reported on Monday that Yancy was a resident of the Sri Lankan Tamil Rehabilitation Camp at Ariyankuppam in Villupuram and had completed Class XII last year, and had recently come to Chennai to visit her 17-year-old friend whom she had met online. The injured teenager was admitted to Government Kilpauk Medical College Hospital, where she remains in critical condition. Police said Yancy and five friends had travelled on three two-wheelers to a star hotel at Koyambedu on Saturday night before the dispute escalated. Yancy’s mother, Mary Stella, told reporters her daughter had wanted to study fashion design abroad. “Now she is gone. I want justice for my daughter,” she said. The rival group had followed the women’s vehicles in their car before the collision, and police have since sealed the bar.
Tens of thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils, many of whom fled the civil war between 1983 and 2009, live in Tamil Nadu, with sizeable communities in and around Chennai. The state’s new chief minister Vijay has begun his term with a heavier political focus on the refugee community and on cross-Palk Strait issues, against the backdrop of renewed Sri Lankan engagement with the new Tamil Nadu government. Sri Lanka’s deputy High Commission is in Chennai.
