A 22-year-old woman from the Malai Kuravar tribe, has petitioned the District Administration alleging illegal detention of her husband and four other relatives, by the Chinna Salem police since Monday.
In the petition submitted to the Collector P.N. Sridhar’s personal assistant Suresh, on Tuesday, Bhuvaneshwari of Thillai Nagar complained that a team of policemen in plain clothes from the Chinna Salem police picked up her husband Prakash, 25 and relatives Dharmaraj, 35 and Selvam, 55 on Monday night.
She claimed that they were sleeping in the house when the team knocked on the door and took the trio in a police van. All pleas by his family to the police to at least tell them why they were being picked up, fell on deaf ears, Bhuvaneshwari said in her petition. Activists pointed out on Twitter that this brought to life scenes from the recently-released Suriya-starrer Jai Bhim.
“When I went to the police station, they were not in the precincts of the station and they were detained illegally. The police again came to Thillai Nagar and picked up two other relatives – Paramasivam, 42 and Sakthivel, 29,” she said.
When contacted, a police officer said that three of the men were involved in incidents of house break-ins and thefts in Kallakurichi town. The fingerprints of the trio matched with samples taken. They will be produced before a court on Wednesday for remand, while two others have been let off.
