Two days after a migrant worker was lynched in Chithirai Chavadi, near Coimbatore district's Alandurai, and 10 men were arrested for the crime, investigations have shown that the man might have still been alive if not for the negligence of two police personnel.
On Thursday, January 13, Alandurai police arrested ten people for allegedly lynching a migrant worker in Tamil Nadu. Two police personnel – Kanagaraj and Thangaraj– have also been transferred to the Armed Reserve for negligence and failing to discharge their duties properly. The victim is yet to be identified.
On Wednesday, the Alandurai police had received a tip-off that a body of an unknown man was found floating in the Chithirai Chavadi dam near Alandurai. The police sent the body for a post mortem and booked a case under Section 174 CrPC (police to enquire and report on suicide, etc).
However, during the investigation, it was found that the deceased had been seen alive by two police personnel the previous night, on January 11, in a farm belonging to Viswanathan (30), in Chithirai Chavadi. The man was tied up and had been beaten.
According to sources at the Alandurai police station, the deceased had gone to the farm and had allegedly caused a ruckus in one of the houses, involving women of the locality, when he was caught and beaten up by the group of men. However, according to another source the man had gone to the house to receive pending wages.
After beating the man, the men in the area called the police to hand him over. They proceeded to inform the two police personnel – Kanagaraj and Thangaraj – that the man was allegedly in an inebriated condition. The police personnel reportedly asked them to bring the man to the station the next morning and left the spot.
However, the police sources said that the men continued to beat him and he died. They allegedly took his body in an auto and dumped it on the bank of the Noyyal river the same night. The next morning, when the police enquired as to where the man was, they were told that he had escaped the premises.
When the unknown body was discovered at the dam, after subsequent investigation it was found that the body belonged to the man who was being beaten at Chithirai Chavadi.
A total of 10 persons – K Vishwanathan (30), A Kaliyappan (56), K Sampathkumar (41), K Duraisamy (50), C Karthik (31), P Ganesan (37), B Jagannathan, A Ponnuchamy (52), R Jyotiraj (50), and C Saravanakumar (44) have been arrested.
Alandurai police said that the FIR has been changed to Section 302 of IPC (punishment for murder). Meanwhile, SP S Selvanagarathinam has ordered the transfer of the two police personnel to the Armed Reserve.