Erode: Youth suicide bid with gas cylinder foiled

Erode: Tactful and patient action by both police and fire services brigade saved an entire village in Erode district from a potential disaster on Monday, as a drunken youth threatened to commit suicide by blowing up cooking gas cylinders.

Without a job, 27-year-old Karthik of Ayyampalayam village near Gobichettipalayam, was frequently locked in quarrels with his father Kasilingam.

Another verbal spat on Monday afternoon between the son and father led to Karthik, after consuming liquor, rolled out the two gas cylinders kept at home and threatened to kill himself by blowing them up if “his father is not arrested.”

Frightened by the youth’s terror tactics of threatening to light the two cylinders to kill himself as it could have resulted in a big explosion affecting the entire village, neighbours gathered before Kathik’s house and tried to pacify him.

But as the youth intensified his threat, they informed the Goundapadi police station and the fire brigade at Gobi.

Officers from both departments rushed to the spot to avert any disaster and tried to persuade Karthik to come out of his house.

But with the youth continuing with his bizarre threat, at one stage the officials talked him out for a cup of tea and grabbed him and took him to the police station for investigation.

The police and fire brigade even switched off electricity supply to the entire village as a precautionary message. Eventually, villagers heaved a huge sigh of relief, but complained they could not feed their kids or cook in their homes for four hours, in the wake of the youth’s bizarre behavior.

BURIAL OF MAOIST OPPOSED
Meanwhile, villagers of Kadayampatti gave a memorandum to the Salem collector urging him not to permit the burial of the body of an alleged Maoist from that area, Manivasagam, who was killed in a police encounter in Kerala on October 29. They said the youth had left the village 20 years back and trying to revive his memory now could ‘brainwash’ the youth.