Chennai: Tension prevailed in a small town near Chennai after a gang hacked to death a Christian municipal Councillor inside a church.
Persecution Relief, a social network monitoring attacks on Christians in India, said Dhanasekharan, a member of the Pentecostal Devasabha Church, was attending Sunday service around 11:30 am on October 2 in a prayer hall in Padappai when he received a call.
As the 34-year-old came out, a group of five people surrounded him. The victim ran inside a nearby church and his attackers pursued him. They hacked him to death there itself, Persecution Relief coordinator Shibu Thomas told Matters India.
The victim is a resident of Periyar Nagar, a suburb of Padappai, a small but fast developing town on the Chennai-Bengaluru highway.
Dhanasekharan represented the ward six of the local municipal council as a member of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK, Dravidian progressive party).
The Hindu newspaper quoted local police as saying Dhanasekaran was the youth wing secretary of the Padappai DMK unit.
The gang attacked him with sickles and sharp weapons.
Citing eyewitness accounts, the police said the gang chased the victim for about 150 m before overpowering him.
Chaos prevailed as a large number of people who had come to the church fled in fear on witnessing the daylight attack.
The Manimangalam police rushed to the spot and removed the body for autopsy at the government hospital in Chromepet.
On hearing the news, several DMK cadres and sympathisers gathered at the spot, leading to unrest in the area and police reinforcements were deployed to keep the situation under control.
“Preliminary inquiries have given us clues and we will arrest the killers soon,” said a senior police official who visited the spot. “The victim was involved in sand supplying and lorry transport. Either business or political rivalry could be the reason for the murder,” he added.
Padappai is 13 km from Tambaram. It houses many firms such as Nissan, Appolo Tyres, Alstom T&D and Infac India.