Tamil Nadu Police on Tuesday arrested three men accused of kidnapping and raping a college student near the Coimbatore International Airport late on Sunday night, after an intense 36-hour manhunt that deployed seven special teams and almost the entire city police force.
Coimbatore City Police Commissioner Saravana Sundar said the three were intercepted on the outskirts of Mettupalayam on Monday evening and shot in the legs after trying to escape. “The accused were trying to escape from the place when the police had to shoot them in the leg in Villakinaru,” he said.
The men, identified as Guna, Karuppasamy and Karthik Alias, were taken to Coimbatore Medical College Hospital. Police said a police chief was also injured in the incident.
Police said the survivor, a graduate student, was with a friend in a car parked near the airport at around 11pm on Sunday when three men broke the window, assaulted the man and kidnapped the woman. They took her to an isolated hut nearby, where she was allegedly raped. She was found at around 4.30am on Monday and is under medical care.
A senior police officer told the Indian Express that the breakthrough in the investigation emerged from surveillance linked to a car theft a week ago and a city-wide alert on a stolen iPhone.
“The accused had stolen a TVS 50 (two-wheeler) car a week before the sexual assault. A parallel police investigation on TVS 50 was going on as the police collected dozens of CCTV clips. On Sunday night, after the crime, the police assumed that the accused had left the crime scene in the airport area, so they checked all the CCTV cameras in the area. In one of the clips, three people in the same age group were found. TVS 50 case footage matched the three spotted in the footage from the footage from the police,” the officer said. Also clues leading to their possible travel to Mettupalayam.
The trio are also alleged to have taken the survivor’s friend’s iPhone during the assault. Believing that the suspects might try to sell it, the police quietly alerted all used mobile phone shops in Coimbatore and Mettupalayam.
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“On Monday evening, one of the three approached a store to sell an iPhone. When the store owner was alerted, he told the customer that he needed 10 minutes to charge the phone before he could buy it. Meanwhile, the police were alerted, and a team came and picked him up. Two others were also waiting on the road on the outskirts of the town and were later picked up,” the officer said.
During interrogation, the men allegedly led police to a wooded area where they allegedly hid a knife. When they tried to flee during the investigation, the officers shot them, wounding them in the legs.
Police said that one of the suspects had a previous murder case, another in a robbery case, and the third was a suspect in a house robbery case. All three are said to be logging workers from Sivaganga; Two brothers.
The survivor and her friend are still undergoing treatment.
(Tags for translation)Tamil Nadu Police
