On Sunday night, near the Coimbatore airport, around 11 pm, a young postgraduate student sitting in a parked car with a male friend was allegedly gang-raped.
Police said three men smashed the car’s window, assaulted the man, and abducted the woman. They took her to a nearby isolated shed, where she was allegedly raped. She was found hours later at around 4:30 am on Monday in a distressed state, and was immediately taken for medical care.
Following this, Coimbatore Police had launched a seven special teams, aided by surveillance footage and digital tracking, began combing through the city and its outskirts.
Within 36 hours, the police traced and arrested the suspects identified as Guna, Karuppasamy, and Karthik alias Kaleeswaran near Mettupalayam late Monday night.
“The accused were trying to escape from the spot when the police had to shoot them in the leg in Vellakinaru,” Coimbatore City Police Commissioner Saravana Sundar said, per the Indian Express.
The three were later admitted to Coimbatore Medical College Hospital.
Later, a senior police officer told The Indian Express, “The accused had stolen a TVS 50 (two-wheeler) a week before the sexual assault. A parallel police probe on the TVS 50 was happening in which police collected dozens of CCTV clips.”
“On Sunday night, after the crime, police assumed the accused walked out of the crime scene in the airport area, so they examined all surveillance cameras in the locality. In one of the clips, three people in the same age group were found. TVS 50 case footage matched with the three spotted in the footage from the airport area. Police also had clues leading to their likely travel to Mettupalayam.”
“On Monday evening, one of the three approached a shop to sell the iPhone. As the shop owner was alerted, he told the customer that he needed 10 minutes to charge the phone before he purchased it. In the meantime, the police were alerted, and a team came and picked him up. Two others were also waiting by the road in the town’s outskirts and were picked up later,” the officer further recounted.
