Farm owner mistakes man for boar, shoots and dumps body

On receiving information of a corpse on the tracks on October 8, a team led by the Dharmapuri Railway police had rushed to the spot and sent the body of the deceased, C Arumugam, for post-mortem at the Dharmapuri government hospital.

The police had initially registered a case of suspicious death but the autopsy revealed that the man did not die from being hit by a train, but was gunned down. Further inquiries by the police revealed that Arumugam was shot elsewhere and that his body was dumped on the tracks.

After investigation, it was found that Arumugam was shot down in a groundnut farm nearby. The police, spotting blood stains in the farm, nabbed its owner Shanmugam, who, too, confessed to the crime, sources said. According to the police, Shanmugam, who used to keep watch against wild boars raiding the crop in his farm, had shot Arumugam with a gun at night, assuming him to be a wild boar. The police said the deceased was sharing privacy with his paramour when he was killed.

Shocked over the murder, Shanmugam, with the help of his relative Chinnasamy then carried Arumugam’s body and dumped it on the tracks to make his death appear like a train-hit accident.

“As the body too was mutilated, the police initially believed that the person died from being hit by a train. Only the autopsy revealed it to have been a murder. The woman, who was with Arumugam at the time of incident, also did not reveal the incident to the police fearing outrage from her family members,” the police said. The woman too sustained injuries in the shooting incident and was admitted to the Dharmapuri government hospital, the police said. She was then shifted to the Salem government hospital for further treatment.

Further investigations are on to know how the accused sourced the country-made gun.