Tamil Nadu: Cuddalore MP booked for murder of worker

CUDDALORE: DMK MP from Cuddalore, T R V Ramesh, was booked and five others arrested on Saturday on charges of murdering a worker at the MP’s cashew nut unit in Panruti last month. CB-CID sources said the MP, who is the prime accused in the case, was not at home when a police team went there in the morning.
The five arrested were the MP’s personal assistant Natarajan, cashew factory manager M Kandavel, M Allah Pitchai, K Vinoth and Sundararajan.They are accused of murdering G Govindarasu, 63, of Melmampattu in Panruti, who worked for the past seven years at TRV Gayathiri Cashews owned by the MP. When Govindarasu did not return home after work on September 19, his son G Senthilvel lodged a complaint with the Kadampuliyur police. Senthilvel said the MP’s personal assistant called him from his father’s mobile phone at 2.25am on September 20 and said his father had consumed poison at the unit and had been taken to Panruti government general hospital where doctors declared him brought dead.
Senthilvel, a truck driver, was in Chennai then and requested his cousins Raghuraman and Ananthraj to visit the Panruti hospital. The two men visited the mortuary and found injuries on Govindarasu’s left eye, face, neck and several parts of the body and blood stains on the clothes. “My father was a mentally strong man. There was no major reason for him to commit suicide,” Senthivel said. In his complaint to the police on September 20, Sentilvel accused Ramesh, Natarajan, Kandavel, Allah Pitchai, Vinoth and workers in the cashew unit of attacking his father and murdering him.
Kadampuliyur police registered a case of suspicious death and began investigation. Meanwhile, PMK’s legal unit moved the Madras high court seeking a CBI probe and demanded that the MP and his associates be booked for murder. The case was transferred to the CB-CID on September 27. The agency, after undertaking a preliminary probe, booked the MP and the five others under IPC sections 302 (punishment for murder), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender), 341 (punishment for wrongful restraint), 147 (punishment for rioting), 149 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object) and 120-B (punishment of criminal conspiracy).
PMK legal wing president K Balu, who filed the petition before the high court, accused Kadampuliyur police of acting in a negligent manner. He alleged that Govindarasu was brought to the station on September 19 with severe injuries on his body with a complaint against him for stealing cashewnuts. He alleged that the police, instead of taking Govindarasu to hospital, just told those who brought him to take him to hospital.