Police in Sriperumbudur have arrested a traffic police constable and a grocery shop employee after the death of 24-year-old guest worker Sailesh Kumar, with the case being altered from suspicious death to culpable homicide not amounting to murder following postmortem findings of internal injuries.
Kumar, a native of Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur district, had arrived at Sriperumbudur SIPCOT on October 5 with eight other workers in search of employment. The group obtained jobs at a canteen and rented accommodation in a house owned by S Gnanamoorthy, 33, a constable attached to the Guduvanchery traffic wing, police said.
According to the police account reported by Times of India, a grocery shop operated from the front portion of the house, where A Arif, 26, worked. Another section of the property was rented to guest workers. On Tuesday night, Kumar, who police said was drunk, repeatedly asked Arif for gutka. An argument followed after Arif refused to sell it, after which Kumar and three of his co-workers allegedly manhandled Arif.
Arif then complained to Gnanamoorthy. Police said the two men allegedly assaulted Kumar and forced the workers to leave the premises. A company supervisor later arrived and took the workers away. Kumar subsequently left the property but was found dead in the rented portion of the house on Wednesday morning.
Sriperumbudur police initially registered a case of suspicious death and sent Kumar’s body to Kancheepuram Government Hospital for postmortem examination. The autopsy found a liver injury and internal haemorrhage. Police said these findings established that injuries sustained during the alleged assault had led to Kumar’s death.
Based on the postmortem findings, police altered the case to culpable homicide not amounting to murder and arrested Gnanamoorthy and Arif on Thursday. The case brings renewed attention to the conditions in which migrant workers live in and around Sriperumbudur, one of Tamil Nadu’s major industrial and employment clusters, although the police investigation into the circumstances of Kumar’s death is continuing.
