Acting on a complaint lodged by Elangiam, the mother of victim Balasubramani , against five persons, Velliyanai police registered a case and arrested. The five were identified as Muniyani alias Muniappan, Selvakumar, Palanisamy, Manivel and Muniappan.

A special team led by DSP Kummaraj, which was formed to investigate the lynching case, produced the five persons produced before the FTC magistrate, Ragothaman, who remanded them to custody for 15 days. Later all the five were lodged in the Trichy Central Prison.

Police said, “Muniappan, who runs a tailoring shop, was travelling towards Veeranampatti on his two-wheeler. While nearing Palayam, the 15-year-old boy, Balasubramani, asked to drop him on the way. On the way, Muniappan had stopped his vehicle to attend nature’s call. After they resumed travel, Balasubramani has alighted at Allaligoundanur, his destination.

Later, when Muniappan returned home, he found his mobile phone, which he had kept on the tank cover of his moped, missing. 

He suspected that the boy, whom he had given a lift, must have stolen it and went to the boy’s house along with his friends to Allaligoundanur. After an argument, the group forcibly sent Balasubramani’s mother Elangiyam and her daughter out of the house and reportedly lynched the boy with wooden logs.

Elangiyam was working as a coolie and bringing up her two children after the demise of her husband Palanisamy around 10 months ago.

She said, “They threatened me and my daughter to leave the house at once. Then the group grabbed my son and tied him to a post in my house and started beating him with a log. As I couldn’t watch my son being beaten up, I left the house with my daughter. 

Later, when we came back, we were shell-shocked as my son was lying motionless with severe injuries all over his body and chili paste on his face and eyes. They had made a paste out of dry chilies using the grinding stone in my house and had applied it on his eyes and face. They had also soaked a wooden log in the small water tank outside my house and had beaten with it.”

She demanded severe punishment to the accused for their brutal act. 

DMK president MK Stalin has urged the state government to show no mercy and take stringent action against those involved in the murder of a 15-year-old youth, in Karur. Stating that such inhuman and gory acts were not only unacceptable but a civilised society should not permit people who take law into their own hands and rage in murderous fury, Stalin said. Stalin also added that it was condemnable that a whole village had engaged in mob killing of a boy who had drifted by accident or due to poverty.