Chennai: The Coimbatore police late on Monday shot at and arrested three men – including two brothers – in connection with Sunday night’s chilling gang-rape of a college girl near the international airport. The brothers, police revealed, were out on bail in a murder case.
The 20-year old postgraduate student was in the company of her male friend inside a car at a desolate place near the airport when the three accused, who came on a stolen moped, confronted them. They broke a window pane of the car and forced open the door and attacked the man with a sickle and took the girl away to a vacant plot. The girl was allegedly raped in turns and left to fend for herself.
Revealing details of the crime Coimbatore City Police Commissioner Saravana Sundar on Tuesday told journalists the accused Karuppasamy alias Sathish (30) his brother Kaleeswaran alias Karthik (21), hailing from Sivaganga district, and their distant relative Thavasi alias Guna (20) of Madurai district, were arrested from Vellakinar late on Monday. “The police opened fire as the accused attempted to escape. Sathish and Guna sustained bullet injuries on both legs, while Karthik was injured on one leg,” the Commissioner said.
“We traced them based on digital footprint and surveillance footage from nearly 300 CCTV cameras. We recovered the girl’s mobile phone and her gold ring from them,” he said. The two brothers were out on bail in a case of murder, which they had committed a few years ago.
The Commissioner said the accused had consumed liquor and struck when they found the couple inside the car with no one else around. The woman was abandoned in a pitch-dark area behind a college campus.
The injured accused have been admitted to the Government Coimbatatore Medical College Hospital.
