Two persons were arrested on Sunday, June 11, 2023 in a rent dispute case at Padavedu village near Tiruvannamalai, where it was alleged that the daughter of a shop owner was assaulted by a gang.
The police inquiry and subsequent arrest come in the wake of allegations in a video by Havildar Prabhakaran, who is serving in Jammu and Kashmir, that his wife was stripped by a gang that wanted them to return the rented fancy shop. The video went viral on the social media.
“The initial inquiry has revealed that the woman was neither assaulted nor molested. They are allegations. The incident has been exaggerated. However, we have given police protection to the women who made the complaint,” K. Karthikeyan, SP Tiruvannamalai, told The Hindu.
The police said that on a complaint filed by the Havildar’s wife of ransacking of her shop, along with locals and other traders, the Padavedu police arrested K. Hariprasad and V. Selvaraj, who went along with the shop owner, K. Ramu, to retrieve the shop from her father.
The police said it was around 10 a.m. on Saturday that K. Ramu, who has inherited his father’s building in front of the temple in the village after his death, went and spoke to Selvamurthy, who has been running a fancy shop in the building on rent for a decade.
Ramu wanted them to vacate the shop as per a written agreement reached in December 2022. Under the agreement, which was cross-checked by the district police, Selvamurthy would vacate the shop by February 10, 2023, as Ramu paid ₹9.50 lakh in deposit that was given by Selvamurthy to Kumar, Ramu’s father, a decade ago.
Selvamurthy had been running the shop on a rent of ₹3,000 a month since then. In February when Ramu asked Selvamurthy to return the shop, Selvamurthy hesitated. Since then, Ramu has been visiting the shop to make Selvamurthy to vacate the shop.
The police said that on Saturday, along with two others, Ramu again went to the shop where he picked an argument with Selvamurthy and his two sons (Udaya and Jeeva) and daughter Keerthi. In the heated argument, Jeeva hit Ramu on the head and the neck with a sharp weapon.
Immediately, the locals and traders gathered at the shop and ransacked the fancy items in the front of the shop. On an alert, the police rushed to the spot and shifted the injured Ramu to hospital at 11.20 a.m. whereas, the police said, Keerthi got admitted by herself only at 4.20 p.m. to a hospital near Vellore. “As the issue was a civil dispute, initially we did not want to get involved in it. Our role was to investigate the allegations and ensure peace in the village,” Mr. Karthikeyan said.
On Sunday, police pickets were deployed at Padavedu. Police protection has been provided to Keerthi. The policemen will be in the village until the peace returns. Efforts are also being made to nab Jeeva, the police said.
