Madurai lawyer appearing for Maoists held

The Q Branch police commenced their raid at the house of lawyer Murugan at S Alangulam near Sellur in Madurai at 5.30 am and continued for seven hours. During the raid they had seized the mobile phones of Murugan and his wife Alagudevi, who is also a lawyer, and switched them off. 

More than 10 policemen were involved in the search. At the end of the raid they arrested Murugan and took him to an undisclosed location. They took along with them the mobile phones of Murugan and Alagudevi, their laptop and the case related documents. 

Police sources said that Murugan had links with Maoists who were arrested in a 2007 case in which they had took arms training at Murugamalai near Periyakulam in Theni district. 

Apart from that Murugan’s younger brother Velmurugan was also involved in 2007 Varusanadu shooting incident and had been absconding since 2011. Q Branch police were in search for documents related to the absconding Maoists and hence they raided the house of Murugan to get details related to Velmurugan. They had found evidence related to Velmurugan and other Maoists. So they arrested Murugan. 

However, the lawyer’s wife Alagudevi and kin denied the charges and said Murugan has been running a legal aid firm and the case of Maoists were just two cases among 200 the firm has been dealing with. His wife added that he had seen the Maoists just as clients. 

Speaking to DTNext, Raja, Junior lawyer of Murugan, claimed that the hearing for the Maoists case is scheduled on January 11 and hence to stop Murugan from appearing in the case he was arrested and the documents which would be used for the case were seized.