CHENNAI TEEN MURDER

     

Chennai teen murder

(CB-CID arrests ex-army officer)

       The mystery over the killing of a 13-year-old inside the army campus was resolved Subday with the arrest of a retired senior army officer who confessed the crime. The Tamil Nadu Police crime branch, after a week long investigation, arrested the 58-year-old retired Lt Col Kandaswamy Ramraj, a native of Madurai, who has been booked under Section 302 (relating to murder) of IPC. "We have got a major breakthrough in the Dilshan murder case. We confronted the retired army officer with physical witnesses and evidences which made him to confess," CBCID ADGP R Sekar told reporters on the killing of Dilshan who fell to the bullet when he trespassed into the army residential quarters last Sunday to pluck mangoes and almonds. Stating that the retired army officer got annoyed by the frequent trespassing of the boys to pluck mangoes and almonds, he said, "this lead him to shoot from his rifle from a balcony at the time of incident."

        Sekar said that though initially police came to know there were only three children at the time of incident it later came to light that there was a fourth boy who informed them about a senior army man who tried to erase the evidence, he said. With the help of fourth boy, police could zero in on Ramraj who initially refused to admit that he owned a licensed weapon but later confessed that he had applied for renewal of license with the suburban police, he said. "He has got the 0. 3mm rifle from Jabalpur in 2004 and the license was valid till 2008. But since then he had not renewed the license and recently, he had applied for the renewal at the suburban Police. Even the army personnel did not know he was holding a rifle without license," he said. 

                                                                       Prof. John Kurakar