Students with long knives on MTC bus terrorise public

Police said the incident happened on the MTC bus on route 57 F, which plies between Karanodai and Broadway, on Wednesday.  The visuals showed the students blocking both the entrances with weapons in their hands and scraping it on the road, even as they asked the fellow passengers not to panic. The bus crew were warned not to stop the bus until they say so.

“When the bus was mobbing near the Mint flyover near Kondithope, few students took out knives from their backpacks. While the students on the bus called names of the other ‘route thalai’, their friends on two-wheelers recorded the footage on their mobile phones. Most of the students on the bus had covered their faces with handkerchiefs,” police noted. 

As the video went viral, police teams swung into action to identify the students and place of occurrence.  “From their conversations, it was clear that they were Presidency College students. A police team reached the college and with the help of faces seen in the footage, they nabbed A Anandaraj (18) from Nerkundram, a first year degree student,” said an officer. 

Police have also detained eight other students: Arun (19), Siva (19), Jegan (18), Dilli (19), Gopi (18), Dheena (19), Murugesh (20) and Damodharan (19) in connection with the incident. 

The last such incident happened on a suburban train when a group of college students travelling on an EMU brandished deadly weapons and scraped it against the platform to trigger sparks. That video, too, had gone viral, attracting the attention of the City Police and railway police.