Cattle farm owner and two others murder boy near Chennai, confine victim’s kin for four months to prevent them from alerting cops

CHENNAI: Four months after a 15-year-old boy was killed and buried on a farmland in Tiruttani, police arrested three people, including the boy’s employer. Ever since the murder, the culprits had locked up the victim’s three other family members in a goat farm illegally in a bid to prevent the news from reaching police.

Police arrested the cattle farm owner and two others in connection with the murder on Thursday. The body of the deceased, Suresh, was exhumed.

The incident came to light only after the victim’s mother escaped from the farm and lodged a complaint with the Tiruttani Town police on Wednesday night. The accused were identified as M Murugan, 44, owner of the cattle farm, M Bhuvana, 34, and M Vinoth, 20, a relative of the victim’s family. All three were arrested by the Tiruttani Town police.

The deceased, S Suresh, of Thamaraikulam Street in Tiruttani, had been working at Murugan’s leased farmland along with his mother, S Vennila, 40, and his two younger brothers, aged six and eight. Following the death of Suresh’s father, the family was struggling financially. With the help of Vinoth, they secured a work at the farm.

The family had been employed there for the past eight months.

According to police sources, Murugan had left Suresh in charge of the cattle while he travelled to Madurai with his family to attend a temple festival. During his absence, some heads of cattle and around 50 chickens went missing from the farm. Some of the goats had strayed into neighbouring properties.

On their return, Murugan and Bhuvana confronted Vennila and Suresh over the losses. Vinoth also joined them. During the confrontation, the trio assaulted Suresh with a log, killing him.

To conceal his death, the accused buried the boy’s body on the farm premises and threatened Vennila not to reveal the incident to anyone. They also promised the family a lump-sum payment in exchange for their silence. Police said Vennila remained confined to the farm without access to a mobile phone until she managed to escape when the accused left the premises. On Wednesday evening, she approached the Tiruttani Town police and narrated her ordeal.

Police traced the accused to a location near Thiruvalangadu and arrested them on Thursday morning.

On Vennila’s complaint, police registered a case of murder and destruction of evidence. Revenue officials were brought in to exhume the body, and an on-site autopsy was conducted at the farm premises. The body was later shifted to the Tiruttani cemetery. Since the deceased belongs to a Scheduled Tribe community, police sources said the relevant SC/ST provisions would be invoked depending on the outcome of the investigation.

Tiruvallur superintendent of police Vivekananda Shukla, who addressed the media after the autopsy, said the complaint named three of them as accused, and that a fourth person’s involvement was also being examined. He added that police were awaiting the post-mortem report.