Chennai: Facebook friend slashes woman's neck

Chennai: In yet another incident of an attack on woman, a 28-year-man slashed the neck of a 24-year-old who was his Facebook friend, at Royapettah on Sunday at her house because she refused to marry him. The attacker also injured the woman's sister who tried intervene. The woman is nursing her wound at Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital with eight stitches.

Local residents managed to overpower the man, identified as M. Safiullah of Royapuram and beat him up before handing him over to the police. The incident happened around 11 am, when Safiullah went to meet the woman, a post graduate, staying on Kasim street. He was annoyed that she was not pickng his phone calls.  

Police said Safiullah, a school dropout, befriended the woman 11 months ago, while she was selling shirts online, saying that he was an engineer. He also started visiting her at her home and got introduced to her family. He even took money from them promising to get them land in city outskirts and also took a sum of '1.50 lakh promising to get a school seat to a child of one of their relatives.

After he had failed in his promises, the woman made some inquiries and found that he was a school dropout. The victim started distancing herself from Safiullah and ignored his phone calls regularly.  On Sunday when Saifullah went to her house, her brother opened the door. Saifullah went in, pulled the woman out and slashed her neck from behind. When her elder sister intervened, he attacked her also and she suffered injuries in her hand.

Neighbours rushed to the scene on hearing the women's cries and caught Saifullah and also took the woman and sister to hospital. The man was bashed up by local residents before he was handed over to Royapettah police station.

Police booked Saifullah on the charges of attempt to murder and remanded him. He told police that he had brought knife from his father's dry fish stall in Royapuram.