KARAIKAL: A 38-year-old woman wanted for her involvement in three murders was arrested on Thursday under Goondas Act, two days after she announced her entry into politics.
R Ezhilarasi of Neravy was arrested at her house as per the order of Karaikal District Collector A Vikranth Raja. She is accused of three murders, including that of former Agriculture Minister and Speaker VMC Sivakumar in 2017. Ezhilarasi had announced her entry into politics in a television interview a couple of days ago. She was arrested from her house in Netaji Nagar and taken to All Women’s police station.
When she was brought out of the police station and loaded into a van amid heavy security, Ezhilarasi managed to say a few words to reporters. Ezhilarasi said, “Politics, politics. I am being taken down by politics and past vendetta by the Goondas Act.”
The tale of Ezhilarasi’s rise to notoriety is a bloody one. A liquor baron named Ramu had allegedly made her his second while he was still married to his first wife. Ezhilarasi and her alleged husband were returning home on their motorcycle one afternoon in 2014. They were intercepted by a team of hit-men. Ramu was hacked to death while Ezhilarasi survived but suffered grave injuries in the attack. She swore revenge and managed to take the reins of her husband’s gang and his position in the underworld.
Gangster Aiyyappan, one of the main suspects in the murder and Ramu’s first wife Vinodha, who plotted the attack, were allegedly brutally murdered in separate attacks the following year. Ezhilarasi was arrested and had come out on bail.
Two years later, on January 3, 2017, Sivakumar was brutally murdered by a gang of contract killers as he was visiting the wedding hall he was building in Neravy. Ezhilarasi was named as the prime suspect and arrested. She came out on bail a few months ago and returned to a life of crime. In the past few months, she also busied herself with social work. Ezhilarasi said she would contest the upcoming elections in Puducherry in a television interview in Karaikal couple of days ago.