The cage the place monkeys used to scare and assault inmates have been saved on the Anbu Jothi Ashram in Villupuram district.
| Photo Credit: Special association
Lakshmi Ammal, 80, a visually impaired girl, and her son, Muthuvinayagam, 48, who was intellectually challenged — each admitted to Anbu Jothi Ashram at Kundalapuliyur in Villupuram district on August 11, 2021 — are feared dead, police sources stated.
The complainant within the case, S. Natarajan, 68, of Sankarankovil in Tenkasi district, informed The Hindu on Saturday that investigators of the Crime Branch-CID additionally knowledgeable him that his cousin, Lakshmi Ammal, and her son had died after they have been shifted to a house in Chengalpattu, and their our bodies have been disposed of.
“I am told that my cousin and her son died three months after I admitted them to Anbu Jothi Ashram. I was neither informed of their being shifted to another home nor about their death. I strongly suspect foul play in the demise of my close relatives and appeal to the authorities concerned to investigate the matter thoroughly,” Mr. Natarajan stated.
Though the ashram authorities knowledgeable him that he might go to his kin any time, they refused to attend calls or share details about their well-being when he telephoned them. “While Maria, wife of the prime suspect and ashram founder Jubin Baby, refused to share any information, Baby had never answered calls. After seeing the news in the media that many inmates had gone missing from the ashram, I went over there to check the condition of my relatives. But they were missing…I lodged a complaint with the police.”
Mr. Natarajan puzzled how an unregistered ashram functioned for thus a few years with none intervention by legislation enforcement companies and admitted a lot of otherwise abled, mentally in poor health and destitute folks with none permission or file of their existence. Asked how he got here to know of Anbu Jothi Ashram, he stated the helpline workers of the Social Welfare Department gave him the small print.
Earlier circumstances
Jayakumar, 60, the elder brother of Tamil Nadu Congress normal council member G. Krishnamurthy, was shifted from Anbu Jothi Ashram to a house in Tirupattur district, the place he died. With no details about his brother, Mr. Krishnamurthy lodged a grievance with the police that his brother, who was admitted to the previous age house run by the Ignite Charitable Trust, Enikkara Thottam, Cuddalore, on July 2022, after which moved to Anbu Jothi Ashram, was missing. The standing of Zafirullah, 70, who was admitted to Anbu Jothi Ashram after which shifted to the New Ark Mission of India (Home of Hope) in Bengaluru from the place he and 14 different inmates allegedly escaped, is just not recognized.
Mentally ‘unsound’
In a associated improvement, the essential statements of two accused individuals arrested within the case have turn out to be questionable after medical doctors on the Villupuram authorities hospital declared them mentally unstable. Police sources stated Muthumani, 35, and Boopalan, 35, have been arrested together with the opposite accused on the fees of wrongful confinement, assault and rape by the Kedar police. They have been produced earlier than the Villupuram hospital medical doctors, who discovered them medically match earlier than being despatched to judicial custody.
After taking up the case from the native police, the CB-CID took the 2 individuals into its custody and produced them on the identical hospital. However, this time, the medical doctors suspected them to be mentally unsound and put them beneath “observation”, the sources stated.
Muthumari and Boopalan had informed the investigators that they have been employed for a month-to-month wage on the ashram by Baby and Maria. Acting on their directions, they and different staff — Biju, Das, Ayyappan and Gopinath — would convey mentally challenged and destitute folks to the ashram.
They would tonsure the inmates on arrival, erase their identities and torture them to instil a way of worry in them. The duo additionally gave statements that they might transport batches of inmates to different houses, the sources added.
