Coimbatore: The Tamil Nadu Police on Monday night arrested three men accused of abducting and gangraping a 20-year-old college student near Coimbatore International Airport. The alleged crime took place on Sunday, November 2. The three accused, identified as Guna, Karuppasamy, and Karthik alias Kaleeswaran, were intercepted on the outskirts of Mettupalayam.
They were shot in the leg during an encounter while trying to escape. They were subsequently taken to the Coimbatore government hospital for treatment. According to the police, a head constable was also injured in the encounter.
How The Accused Were Nabbed?
The police traced the accused during the surveillance of a week-old vehicle theft, a senior police officer told The Indian Express. According to reports, all the accused were drunk at the time of the incident.
As per the media report, the trio had robbed the two-wheeler a week before they allegedly gangraped the college student. As per the senior official, during a parallel probe in the bike theft case, the police had already collected dozens of CCTV clips.
"On Sunday night, after the crime, police assumed the accused walked out of the crime scene in the airport area, so they examined all surveillance cameras in the locality. In one of the clips, three people in the same age group were found," the police officer told the media house.
During the bike-theft probe, the faces of persons on one of the footage matched with the three accused seen in the CCTV clip from the airport area. The police reportedly managed to get clues of the likely visit of the accused to Mettupalayam.
Meanwhile, the accused had also stolen the iPhone of the victim's friends. Suspecting that the accused would try to sell the phone, cops alerted all mobile shops across Coimbatore and Mettupalayam.
Hours before the encounter, one of the three accused reportedly went to a shop to sell the iPhone. The shopkeeper then informed the police. The police officer told the media house that the shopkeeper told the accused to wait the accused for 10 minutes so that he could charge the phone, and in the meantime, he informed the police.
After receiving the information, the police arrived and took him into custody. "Two others were also waiting by the road in the town’s outskirts and were picked up later,” the officer told The Indian Express.
During questioning, the accused took cops to the forest area where they had hidden a knife. However, when they tried to flee, the police opened fire on them.
As per a News18 report, two of the three accused were brothers, while the third accused was their relative.
The incident occurred on Sunday night when the victim and her friend were attacked by the three men near the Coimbatore International Airport. The men allegedly kidnapped the student, sexually assaulted her, and later abandoned her. The victim's friend regained consciousness and alerted the authorities, which led to a rescue operation. The accused reportedly attacked the woman's friend with a sickle.
According to police, the three arrived in a vehicle and attacked her friend while the couple was in the area on Sunday night. Following the attack, the men allegedly threatened and kidnapped her.
