CHENNAI: A 54-year-old man from West Mogappair in Chennai was allegedly beaten to death by three men near Salem on Monday. Kundrathur police said the deceased man, K Venkatesan, had taken Rs 12 crore from one of the suspects under the pretext of securing government jobs for some persons.
On Sunday, after dropping his younger son Santhosh at a college in Kundrathur for NEET exam, Venkatesan and his wife Lakshmi (40) left for Salem in their car. They had told Santhosh that they were visiting a relative. “However, when Santhosh tried to contact his parents later, the call did not go through. When he contacted his relatives in Salem, they said the couple had not reached there. When he went to the local police station to lodge a missing complaint, police personnel said since the parents were last seen at Kundrathur, Santhosh should file a case there itself. So, he went to the Kundrathur station and lodged a complaint,” a police source said.
On Monday night, Santhosh managed to video call his mother and she asked him to leave immediately for Uthangarai in Krishnagiri district as his signature was needed to sell a property. He alerted the police and went to Uthangarai along with a police team. “When they reached the spot, they found that some men had detained Lakshmi at a stone-crushing unit. Police rescued the woman and arrested Ganesan (50) of Thippampatti, Nithyanandham (39) of Pollachi and Vignesh (28) of Uthangarai,” the source added. Venkatesan and Ganesan were relatives.
The trio revealed to police that Venkatesan had cheated Ganesan of Rs 12 crore after promising to secure government jobs for the latter’s friends and other relatives. “When Ganesan recently came to know that Venkatesan was coming to Salem to sell a property, he hatched a plan with his friends. They abducted Venkatesan and his wife to the stone-crushing facility. The trio then beat Venkatesan to death and forced Lakshmi to talk to her son over the video call. They then buried the body on the crushing unit premises itself,” the police said. Venkatesan’s body was exhumed on Wednesday, and sent for postmortem. Kundrathur police have altered the missing person story to murder. The arrested men were taken to Chennai on Thursday.