A 22-year-old law student was brutally assaulted by a pharmacy owner and his aides in Kanpur’s Rawatpur area after a dispute over the price of a medicine turned violent, police said on Sunday, October 26.

The victim, Abhijeet Singh Chandel, a first-year LLB student from Keshavpuram, suffered severe injuries after the attackers allegedly slashed his stomach and chopped off two of his fingers, reported PTI.

According to Assistant Commissioner of Police (Kalyanpur) Ranjeet Kumar, the accused, pharmacy owner Amar Singh Chauhan, his brother Vijay Singh, and their aide Nikhil Tiwari assaulted Chandel with a chopper. A fourth accused, Prince Srivastava, is absconding.

Locals rushed the bleeding student to safety, and his family managed to take him to a hospital, after four others reportedly refused admission due to his critical condition. He is now undergoing treatment at Regency Hospital, where doctors performed a two-hour surgery and gave him 14 stitches on the head.

Chandel’s mother, Neelam Singh Chandel, alleged that the attackers had police connections and that a false extortion case was filed against her son the same night. Police later registered a fresh case of attempt to murder against the accused after the assault came to light.