MADURAI: “Twenty three days of my association with the Auto Shankar gang landed me in jail for more than 23 years,” says K Selvaraj, a life convict in the sensational serial killer case, who got married on Wednesday.
He claims that he was not involved in the spate of killings that rocked the state in the late 1980s.
Selvaraj, hailing from a well-to-do family in Madurai, allegedly ran away to Chennai in 1987 when he was 20 years old after a dispute with his father. He said that he was initially picked up by the police during the riots that broke out after MGR’s death as he was roaming the streets of Chennai as he had no place to go.
“I was released after three months and had no clue about my future when the jail warden asked me to meet ‘Auto’ Mohan,” Selvaraj said.
He met Auto Mohan, brother of Auto Shankar who was looking after the gang’s illicit liquor business a few days later, and accepted an accountant job he was offered for a monthly salary of Rs 1,000.
“On the 23rd day of taking up the job, I was arrested for the murder of three men belonging to a rival group of Auto Shankar gang,” he claimed. He made a daring escape from the Chennai Central Prison on August 20 1990 along with Shankar and three others. Though Shankar and others were arrested subsequently, Selvaraj fled to Mumbai and was rearrested in August 1993, precisely after three years and has been in prison since then.