By Umaima Shafiq
Two men held for kidnapping and raping girls from orphanage
Police have arrested two men including a former prisoner for kidnapping and raping two girls aged 10 and 11 years from an orphanage run by a church at Pollachi in Coimbatore district last week.
The orphanage had 13 boys and three girls. The suspects entered the orphanage in the night through a broken wall behind the church and took away the girls after attacking some of the boys who tried to prevent them. The girls were found that same night on the terrace of a shopping complex and hospitalised. Their condition was said to be serious.
Police traced the culprits based on eyewitness accounts at Tirupur, about 30km from Coimbatore. They confessed to the crime.
Meanwhile the remaining children at the orphanage were transferred to other homes as it was functioning without a licence.
Psychologist found dead in apartment
A senior psychologist, Dr Emma Gonsalves, was found strangulated to death at a seventh floor apartment in Egmore area of Chennai last week.
Emma, 82, was found by her cousin Birdie Fernandez who opened the flat with a spare key when there was no response to her knocks. Birdie also alerted the police who suspect it was a murder related to robbery as Emma’s laptop and other valuables were missing. They also found a stranger entering the building through the surveillance camera footage.
Dr Emma, a native of Kerala, lived alone and had managed a medical counselling centre from home.
Investigations are underway.
Folk dancer surrenders in smuggling case
Nearly a fortnight after police recovered Rs4mn in a red sanders smuggling case, a 54-year-old folk dancer leading the cartel surrendered at Katpadi in Vellore, about 150km from Chennai last week.
Mohanambal arrived at the police station in a wheel chair with her sister Nirmala who was also her accomplice. The sisters smuggled red sanders to foreign buyers with the help of their nephew Saravanan and kept their profits in rented houses. Suspicious neighbours informed the police.
Efforts are on to trace Mohanambal’s gang members. Red sander is a high grade of redwood tree prized for cabinetwork.
Airline fined for ‘harassing’ passenger
Etihad Airways has been fined Rs300,000 by a Chennai-based consumer forum for mentally harassing a wheelchair-bound female passenger aged 69 and making her wait a 12-hour transit at Abu Dhabi due to a printing error in her ticket.
Kanthiammal was returning from Chicago when she was disembarked from her connecting flight at Abu Dhabi. She remained stranded at the airport without her luggage or medicines until her son-in-law arrived from Chennai and escorted her back home.
The forum criticised Etihad staff at Chicago for falsely assuring Kanthiammal that the typo on her ticket would not affect her travel.
Colony torched over dispute
Two policemen brothers were arrested for setting fire to a residential colony over a property dispute in Pudukottai district about 45km from the temple city of Tiruchi last week.
Gunasekaran and Murugesan reportedly owned an plot inside the Udayaneri colony but their neighbours claimed ownership and filed petitions in court. Angered by this, the brothers set fire to the colony forcing the others to vacate.