Five persons were arrested on Tuesday, March 26, 2024, for causing injuries to an animal, after a cow bit into a country-made bomb along the dry Palar river, near Ambur town, in Tirupattur.
The accused persons were identified as S. Manoharan (40), P. Venkatesan (50), K. Ranjith Kumar (42), C. Manjunath (27) and J. Devaraj (35). While Manoharan, Venkatesan and Ranjith Kumar are from Vaniyambadi town, the other two hail from Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh, police said.
An initial inquiry revealed that the men from Vaniyambadi, all farmers, regularly procured country-made bombs from Chittoor to hunt wild boars along the fringe areas of reserve forests in Ambur and Vaniyambadi. They usually put these bombs in sacks of garbage that was dumped on to the dry riverside and lake bunds near forests, where wild animals would sometimes come to feed. Raw meat of the animals was sold in various markets in the district.
The farmers had placed one such bomb in a sack of cabbage waste and dumped it on the riverside in Sengilikuppam village near Ambur town last week. However, the bomb was bitten into by a cow belonging to dairy farmer S. Pravenn Kumar (28), who had taken his cows for grazing along the dry river near the village. Kumar had heard the bomb detonate and saw his cow bleeding in mouth. A case was registered by the Ambur Taluk police.
During the investigation, the police found that one of the accused persons, Manoharan, gave his phone number to a resident in the village to alert him about the presence of wild boar. The police traced his hideout with the phone number and he later confessed that the gang did it to supplement their income from farming. Subsequently, the others were also arrested and they were all lodged at the sub-jail in Tirupattur town.
