Chennai: A video showing students of a popular college in city travelling with swords (patta kathi) and brandishing other sharp weapons in a bus has gone viral on the internet today.
The bus has been identified as an MTC vehicle going towards Broadway. This is one among a series of similar incidents where youngsters belonging to the college-going age group were caught on camera displaying weapons and being involved in foolish daredevilry in public.
In this video, the students can be seen showing off the weapons in the bus with handkerchiefs covering their faces to conceal their identity.
Some of them standing on the footboard can be seen swirling the knives and swords dangerously in their hand. At one point, two of these careless youths bend down from the footboard while the bus is still moving and drag the metal weapons on the road leaving a trail of sparks behind, unmindful of the danger it poses to vehicles coming behind.
The video which is being shown repeatedly on TV channels has created a sense of shock among the parent’s community.
Police say that they have taken custody of one of the individuals who was involved in the act.
The police have recently initiated a crackdown on student groups involved in rowdyism and hooliganism after a video that surfaced earlier this year showed them brandishing weapons inside a local train.
Police were sent to city colleges today to identify the students in the video. They say that this is done by the students to show who is more ‘mass’ or which students group or college is more ‘popular.’
In spite of strict crackdowns, these kinds of incidents occur repeatedly, police said.