Asked to lower TV volume, enraged man kills neighbour

Chennai, April 29: Asking a noisy neighbour to turn down the volume of his television set cost a 27-year-old man in Pallikaranai his life.

Tarun, a van driver from Kamakshi Nagar, requested his neighbour Marimuthu, an autorickshaw driver, to turn down the volume since his four-month-old son was unable to sleep with the television next door blaring.

Marimuthu not only refused to lower the volume, he took a knife from his kitchen and stabbed Tarun in the chest, police said. Marimuthu himself rushed Tarun to a private hospital in Velachery, but he bled to death before reaching there. Doctors pronounced him 'dead on arrival.'

Police have arrested Marimuthu, an autorickshaw driver. Neighbours and police said it was a quite a trivial matter that triggered an argument between the two men. Police quoted eyewitnesses as saying that when Tarun knocked on the door, Marimuthu opened it and shouted at him. When Tarun asked him to lower the volume or switch off the TV, a fisticuff ensued. Marimuthu's wife came to pull the two men apart, when Tarun pushed her away. Enraged over this, Marimuthu rushed into his house, came back with a knife and stabbed Tarun.

"The injury was on the chest, probably in the region of the heart. That's why he died before doctors could do anything," a policeman said. The body of Tarun, who hails from Kerala, was later moved to the Chromepet General Hospital for postmortem. Neighbours said Marimuthu was quarrelsome by nature, but he might not have wanted to kill Tarun. "It was Marimuthu who took Tarun in an autorickshaw to the hospital," said S K Kannan, assistant commissioner, Madipakkam.