Tamil Nadu Police have arrested three men in connection with the alleged abduction and gangrape of a young woman near the Coimbatore international airport on Sunday night.
The accused, identified as Guna, Satheesh Karuppasamy, and Karthik Kaleeswaran, were arrested on Tuesday morning after a brief encounter with the police near Thudiyalur.
According to media reports, they were shot in the leg when they attempted to escape during the chase. The trio were later admitted to Coimbatore Medical College Hospital for treatment.
Police had formed seven special teams to nab the accused even as the incident triggered a massive outrage in the state.
Investigations revealed that all three accused are natives of Sivaganga district and had been living in Irukur while working as daily wage labourers. Karuppasamy and Kaleeswaran are brothers, and all three have criminal records involving murder, assault, and robbery.
The victim, a student at a private college in the city, was talking to her male friend inside a parked car around 11 pm when the three men attacked them and forcibly dragged her away into the darkness. They allegedly took turns raping her and fled the scene.
She was later found lying unconscious and without clothes in a nearby vacant plot. Her male friend, who was also seriously injured while resisting attackers, is also undergoing treatment at a private hospital.
The incident has stirred up a political storm with the opposition parties targeting the M.K. Stalin government over the safety of women in the state.
AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami said Tamil Nadu was the leading state in India in terms of women’s safety when his party was in power.
"A few months ago, I inaugurated a programme in Chennai, on behalf of the AIADMK, to provide women with a box containing pepper spray, torches, and other safety items. The party functionaries continued to distribute the kit throughout Tamil Nadu," the former chief minister said.
Union minister L. Murugan alleged that the Tamil Nadu Police were facing a great deterioration like never before under Chief Minister M.K. Stalin's rule.
"This sexual assault on a young woman in an important area of Coimbatore district reveals the incompetence of the Tamil Nadu government and police," he wrote on X.
BJP state chief Nainar Nagendran had threatened a statewide protest if the culprits were not arrested. The party’s former state president, K. Annamalai, claimed that since the DMK came to power in Tamil Nadu, incidents such as these have shown that anti-social elements no longer fear the law or the police.