Jayalalithaa estate murder: 2 suspects meet with accidents in 24 hours

COIMBATORE/SALEM: Mystery deepened over the recent murder of a security guard at the late Tamil Nadu CM J Jayalalithaa's Kodanad estate after two men suspected of being involved in the crime met with separate road “accidents“ in the last 24 hours, resulting in the death of one of them. While one accident took place in

Salem

district, the other happened near

Palakkad

in Kerala.

The strange turn of events has raised doubts on whether the accidents were stage-managed by those who plotted the Kodanad crime. Kanagaraj (36), Jayalalithaa's former driver who was the prime suspect in the Kodanad crime, was killed in a road accident at Attur in Salem district late on Friday night. One suspect in the murder of a security guard at the late Tamil Nadu CM Jayalalithaa's Kodanad estate was killed and another injured in two separate accidents within 24 hours. In the first accident, Jaya's former driver Kanaga raj died after a car crashed into his motorcycle on the Salem-Chennai National Highway around 9pm on Friday, police sources said.

“Kanagaraj had reached his native village Chitirapalayam in Edappadi on Friday. He consumed liquor before heading for a relative's house... Around 9pm, when Kanagaraj reached Santhanagiri junction on the Salem-Chennai NH, a car rammed into the two-wheeler. Kanagaraj died on the spot,“ a police officer said. Kanagaraj, who was dismissed from duty at the estate in 2012 after allegedly misusing Jaya's name, was working as a temporary driver at a cab company in Chennai.

The second accident took place near Palakkad in Kerala on Saturday morning, injuring the second suspect, K V Sayan (35), and killing his wife Vinupriya and their fiveyear-old daughter Neethu.“He was heading for Thrissur from Coimbatore in a car along with his family on.When the car reached

Kannadi

on the Palakkad-Thrissur Road, it rammed into a parked container truck. The front portion of the car was mangled beyond recognition," a police officer said.

Kerala police said there were similar deep cuts on the throats of Vinupriya and Neethu, which has raised the suspicion that they could have been killed before the accident. Kanagaraj was very close to Sayan, police sources said.

Om Bahadur (51), a Nepalese guard at the estate, was murdered by a gang on Monday morning. Another guard, Krishnan Bahadur, was seriously injured. The gang fled after smashing some windows of the bungalow.

Break-in for Rs 200cr 'treasure': Cops

Tamil Nadu police said on Saturday that the murder of a security guard and burglary at former TN CM Jayalalithaa's opulent retreat in the Nilgiris this week was carried out by an 11-member gang, allegedly brought together by her sacked car driver Kanagaraj. The suspects, police added, believed that somewhere in the bungalow Rs200 crore in cash had been stashed. Police have so far arrested four persons — Santhosh Sami, Deepu, Satheesan and Udhayakumar, all from Thrissur in Kerala — for the attack. Five suspects remained at large as of Saturday evening, police said. Police said they had seized two of the cars used in the attack from the gang members, while the third car was involved in an accident in Palakkad that injured suspect Sayan and killed his wife and child.

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