The charred body of the Congress party’s Tirunelveli East district unit president K.P.K. Jayakumar Dhanasingh, 60, was retrieved from his farm at Karaisutrupudhur, near Thisaiyanvilai, in the district on Saturday.
After Jayakumar went missing from his house on May 2 around 7 p.m., his son Karuthaiah Jefrin lodged a complaint on Friday with the Uvari police.
They retrieved the fully burnt body of the Congress leader from his 10-acre farm, adjacent to his house, in his native place of Karaisutrupudhur on Saturday. Jayakumar’s body was sent to Tirunelveli Medical College Hospital for post-mortem.
Police sources said the body of Jayakumar was found in the garbage yard of his farm by a worker. Since his hands and legs had been tied with power cables, it is suspected that Jayakumar might have been murdered and burnt.
According to sources, Jayakumar had written a letter to a top police official on April 30 accusing eight persons of threatening him following financial disputes and that he found suspicious movement of strangers near his house.
“We found during investigation that Jayakumar had contacted one of his aides on Thursday [May 2] and asked him to take a few copies of the letter kept on a table in his house. The aide read the letter on Friday [May 3] and alerted the family members. Subsequently Jayakumar’s son filed a complaint with the police. We’ll get a clear picture after getting the post-mortem report,” said a police officer. Meanwhile, Tirunelveli Superintendent of Police N. Silambarasan has constituted five special teams to probe the death.
Leaders offer condolences
In his condolence message, Tamil Nadu Congress Committee president K. Selvaperunthagai said he was shocked and traumatised by the untimely demise of Jayakumar, who had served the Congress party at various levels with utmost responsibility.
The TNCC president is expected to attend the funeral on Sunday as the autopsy was completed on Saturday evening.
‘No proper action’
BJP State president K. Annamalai said that the police had not taken proper action on the death threat complaint filed by Mr. Jayakumar. “It is learnt that Mr. Jayakumar had already lodged a complaint with the Superintendent of Police, Tirunelveli, on April 30, citing threat to his life. If this is the situation for a district president of the Congress in the DMK rule, the law and order problems faced by the public is strongly questionable,” he posted on X (formerly Twitter).
PMK president Anbumani Ramadoss called for a CBI probe into Mr. Jayakumar’s death.
