VILLUPURAM: With the arrest of a history-sheeter, the police claim to have cracked the sensational Vellamputhur Dalit family attack case, in which an eight-year-old was clubbed to death and his 14-year-old sister and mother severely injured.
Police said V Thillainathan (37) was involved in 17 similar cases across three districts. Two steel rods, nine mobile phones and six sovereign of gold jewellery while seized while arresting him in his native village, Mel Bhuvanagiri, in Cuddalore late on Sunday.
The police booked him under seven sections, including the Pocso Act, for his alleged sexual attacks on minors. He was expected to be produced in the Thirukovilur Judicial Magistrate Court later in the day.
Superintendent of Police S Jayakumar said the police tracked down Thillainathan as he had committed similar attacks in Cuddalore, Ariyalur and Nagapattinam. He served time in Cuddalore and Tiruchy prisons from 2012 to 2016.
Thillainathan came to know of Vellamputhur as he often visited his accomplice Ramu alias Padiyappa’s house in the nearby Manampoondi. A few months after Ramu died last year, Thillainathan broke into a Kurava house in Vellamputhu where he attacked a schoolgirl and her parents.
Accused used to target widows and home-alone women, says police
Having earning notoriety for burglary and alleged sexual perversion in Cuddalore district, V Thillainathan, accused in the Vellamputhur Dalit family attack case, confessed to shifting his criminal activities to Tiruvannamalai and Villupuram districts after coming out of jail in 2016. Thillainathan’s modus operandi was targeting houses of widows and women who live alone in isolated places in wee hours.
Police say Thillainathan himself confessed to his involvement in as many as 17 burglary cases overall, in which most of the women were raped. Detailing how he had evaded arrest in recent times, the Villupuram SP said Thillainathan, fed up with repeated arrests, avoided using his mobile phone. He used one more mobile phone, which he had bought in his relative’s name, to stay in touch with a woman he had an affair with, but he never carried it with him while committing his atrocities.
He also had the habit of consuming liquor before breaking into houses with a steel rod. He used to remove his shirt and lungi a few metres away from the house he had planned to rob, to avoid being traced with the colour of his shirt, and used to brutally assault house inmates with the steel rod and sexually assault them.
Praising the special team of police, he said they managed to zero in on the accused through scientific investigation, which included poring over CCTV footage and former convicts’ records. The police team also arrested Ambiga, with whom he allegedly has an illicit affair, for helping him pawn the stolen jewellery.Speaking to Express, the SP said the victims of the Dalit family he attacked — a woman and her 14-year-old daughter — are responding to treatment at Puducherry JIPMER hospital.
