Press Trust of India
Chennai, July 2: A 24-year-old engineering graduate was arrested in Tirunelveli in connection with the sensational murder of a woman IT professional here last week and when surrounded by police, he attempted suicide by slashing his neck.
“The accused Ram Kumar was arrested in Tirunelveli Friday night. When police went into his house, he hid in the backyard and inflicted an injury on his neck by using a knife when surrounded by police,” Chennai police commissioner T K Rajendran said here Saturday.
He said Ram Kumar was rushed to Tirunelveli Medical College hospital for treatment. A special probe team from here had left for that city to take him into custody, he said. 24-year-old Swathi, employed with software giant Infosys, was hacked to death around 6.30 am June 24 while waiting to board a train at Nungambakkam Railway Station to her workplace on the city outskirts.
The commissioner said Ram Kumar came to Chennai just three months back from his native T Meenkakshipuram village near Shencottah in Tirunelveli district. He stayed in a private lodging house in Choolaimedu. The residence of the victim, Swathi, was also in this neighbourhood.
“He came to know that Swathi uses the suburban train to go to her workplace near Chengelpet and he was stalking her,” he said, adding the pursuit eventually ended in her murder. Asked what was the motive behind the murder and if Ram Kumar had tried to befriend Swathi, he said a probe is on and that the assailant’s efforts to befriend her did not succeed.
He said police sifted through CCTV footage in and around the scene of crime – Nungambakkam Railway Station – and went door to door in Choolaimedu area to zero in on the culprit. Giving a background to the arrest, a police release said Kumar’s image recorded on CCTV tallied with a photo found in the register of inmates in a lodge in the same neighbourhood.
“Details in the register, including photograph matched the description of the culprit. It was found that he was Ram Kumar, a native of T Meenakshipuram, in Tirunelveli district,” the commissioner said. Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa lauded Rajendran for quickly cracking the case. “She lauded him and the department for apprehending the culprit by quickly conducting the probe,” a government release said.
