Army jawan claims his wife stripped half-naked, attacked by mob; Tamil Nadu Police deny charges

An official involved in the investigation told indianexpress.com that based on the complaint provided by Prabhakaran’s wife, they arrested two people — Hariharan, 30, and Selvaraj, 50 — from the same village and booked them under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections pertaining to rioting, trespassing, abusing words, voluntarily causing hurt, and provisions of Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Women Harassment Act.

A controversy erupted after a retired Army officer Lt Col N Thiagarajan tweeted a video of Prabhakaran, a resident of the Padavedu village, appealing to the Director General of Police (DGP) Tamil Nadu to save his family back home.

Prabhakaran, in the video, can be heard saying that he is serving in Kashmir and on June 10, 120 people ransacked the shop run by his wife Keerthi in an area belonging to the Hindu Charitable and Endowments (HR and CE) Department. He said the mob attacked his wife, who sustained injuries to her ear and nose, and that they had no security. He claimed that his senior officials spoke to the superintendent of police (SP) in Tiruvannamalai, who agreed to investigate the issue.

“We informed the local police station, but no action was taken. DGP sir please save us… They (mob) have stripped my wife half-naked and attacked her. In what world is this fair?” Prabhakaran asked.

The video soon grabbed attention and BJP Tamil Nadu president K Annamalai replied to the tweet that he had asked his party functionaries to reach out to the jawan’s family.

“Truly gutted to hear her story and I felt ashamed that this had happened to her on our Tamil soil! Our party people are rushing to attend her now, who is admitted in a hospital in Vellore. @BJP4TamilNadu will stand with her & our Havildar’s family in getting justice for her,” he wrote.

Contradicting the jawan’s claim, the Tiruvannamalai police issued a statement noting that a mob had indeed barged into the shop and thrown the items inside but they never molested his wife.

The police said they conducted a preliminary inquiry after the video surfaced. They said a shop was built on the land that belonged to the Renugambal temple by one Kumar of Kunnathur and was leased out to Selvamurthy of the Padavedu village five years ago for Rs 9.5 lakh and the former was getting a monthly rent of Rs 3,000.

As the shop owner Kumar died, his son Ramu told Selvamurthy to return the shop to them and he agreed to return the money his father had taken. Both parties reached an agreement in front of village heads and formally signed it.

However, despite several attempts, Selvamurthy reportedly refused to take the money and vacate the shop. Ramu and his family went to the shop on June 10 and asked Selvamurthy to vacate the place immediately.

A skirmish ensued and Selvamurthy’s son Jeeva attacked Ramu with a knife and the local people soon gathered in support of Ramu and threw the items inside the shop, the police said, maintaining that Keerthi and her mother-in-law were not attacked.