Body of inmate missing from Pollachi centre for special children exhumed, four arrested

The Hindu

24-05-2025

The Coimbatore rural police on Saturday exhumed the body of a youth with intellectual disability from a private property in Nadupuni village in Pollachi North Block, and arrested four persons from Yuthira Charitable Trust (Special Children Care and Training Centre) at Rathinasabapathy Puram, located about 20-km away, where the deceased was an inmate earlier.
The police established that the trustees and the staff of the centre had beaten up Varunkanth, 24, to death, and buried the body surreptitiously in a bid to cover up the crime.
Police conducted a postmortem on the spot and handed over the decomposed body found to the family.
Giriram, 36, of Thiruvannamalai, a trustee; Senthil Babu, 54, father of another trustee; Nitish, 26, a staff member, and Ranganayaki, 36, of Thoppampatti near Pollachi were arrested and remanded in judicial custody.
The youth's father T. Ravikumar of Karavalli Mathappur in Coimbatore was initially deceived into believing by the Trust authorities that Varunkanth had gone missing while on a sightseeing trip.
The youth suffering from attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was admitted to the facility by his family about three months ago.
Three days after committing the murder, the trust authorities had, on May 15, informed Ravikumar about the disappearance of Varunkanth and also prompted to lodge a police complaint.
The police learnt that the Trust authorities had, on May 9, taken all other inmates barring Varunkanth, to a theme park near Mettupalayam, purportedly due to his aggressive condition.
Subsequently, his aggression had accentuated. The trustees and staff of the rehabilitation home had beaten him up severely with wooden logs and plastic pipes for three days till May 12, causing his death, K Karthikeyan, Superintendent of Police, Coimbatore district, said.
The trustees and the staff had thereafter readied five pits at the private land they owned at Nadupuni, under the pretext of agricultural activity, and buried the body in the morning hours of May 13, in one of the pits.
On May 14, the trustees and staff took the rest of the 26 inmates to Aliyar Dam to enforce credence to their contention that Varunkanth had gone missing during the sightseeing trip.
The authorities of the trust who had cooperated with the police at the initial stage, went absconding and switched off their phones as the investigation progressed.
Police sources said two other trustees Shaji and Kavitha, a doctor, who were at large, were the masterminds in the crime. The police are on the lookout for them.