Colour chase on Holi turns tragic, youth dies of burns

HYDERABAD: Holi revelry turned tragic for an engineering student who lost his life in a freak sequence of events triggered on Sunday at Singareni Colony in Saidabad.J Chander Naik, 24, a third year student of Gurunanak College, was working at a construction site on Sunday. A girl familiar to him approached him and hurled an egg at him and threw colour. At around noon on the same day, while Chander was going to a grocery store, he came across the minor girl and chased her to put some colour on her. The girl ran into a house belonging to one Lakshmi.“Chander was waiting outside the thatched bathroom where the girl hid. Very close the thatched portion, Lakshmi was boiling water on wood," sub-inspector Rajender said.According to him, the girl saw a bottle inside the bathroom and assumed it was coloured water and threw it at Chander. But the liquid in the bottle was turpentine. Drenched in turpentine, Chander caught fire because of the burning wood nearby.“Chander ran while he was getting burnt. He took a dip in a drum full of water and was shifted to Osmania General Hospital, but succumbed to injuries," Rajender said. In his dying declaration, Chander said the incident was an accident. He hailed from Nagarkurnool district and was from a poor family.