Police at Om Sharnam apartments at Punaichak in Patna where Rishi Kesh Muni was murdered. Picture by Jai Prakash

Patna, Sept. 20: Seven assailants dragged a 27-year-old engineering student out of his flat in small hours today and beat him to death on the ground floor of the building, exposing the inability of police to ensure safety in the high-rises in the state capital.

The incident in the Shastrinagar police station area also bared the fear in the heart of the residents of the building. They heard the deafening cries for help of the victim but could not muster courage to come out of their house and save the youth being slashed with swords by the goons.

Rishi Kesh Muni, a student of RP Sharma Institute of Technology, was fast asleep in his first-floor flat in Om Sharnam Apartments in Punaichak when the assailants broke open the front door with iron rods and barged into the house around 2am. They caught hold of Rishi and started beating him up.

Rishi’s mother tried to resist but was hit hard in the back of her head by one of the attackers. She started bleeding profusely and lost consciousness.

Rishi was then dragged to the ground floor and the beating continued for at least half an hour, leaving him dead on the spot.

Rishi used to live in flat number 102 with his paralytic father Kapil Muni Yadav, his mother Kamla Devi and Vyas Muni, his elder brother.

Sources said Rishi’s interest in a particular girl might have led to his killing.

“When the men were dragging him out, they kept shouting ‘isko to maar hi dena hai aaj (he has to be killed today)’. His (Rishi’s) mother tried to save him and got injured in the process. His elder brother, Vyas, who is an alcoholic, could not react because of the influence of liquor. The apartment gate was locked and Rishi was beaten up in the portico before being slashed with swords,” the source added.

The police reached the spot around 3.30am after they received a call from some neighbours of the victim.

Rishi’s family has named five persons — Saurav and Gaurav, brothers living in flat number 203 of the same apartment, their father Jyoti Mishra, mother Sushila Mishra and uncle Sunil Kumar Mishra — in the FIR.

The police claimed to have arrested both Sunil and Jyoti Mishra and another person by the name of Chakrabarty, who was allegedly a party to the crime.

The doors of all the flats in the apartment remained shut today with residents too terrorised to speak about the incident.

Sources claimed that problems between the two families had been there for quite some time now.

“Both Saurav and Gaurav are known to create a lot of problems in and around the building. Things worsen when their uncle Sunil Kumar Mishra joins them. Many times, they have got into fights with the other residents on petty issues. For around two months there was tension between the two families but the reasons are not known. It is not possible that no one heard anything in the building. The men were carrying weapons and no one wanted to confront them and get into trouble,” a source living near the apartment told The Telegraph.

Police officers said the family of the deceased was not giving them much information.

“The mother of the deceased is undergoing treatment at Patna Medical College and Hospital. Altogether three persons, whose names are mentioned in the FIR, have been taken into custody. The guard of the apartment has been detained for questioning. The police are interrogating the accused and are trying to know the motive behind the murder. Things will become clearer soon,” an officer at the Shastrinagar police station said.