Murder of siblings and a police encounter that rocked Coimbatore 16 years ago

For a 10-year-old girl and her seven-year-old brother living in a busy commercial area of ​​Coimbatore, Friday morning, October 29, 2010, gave up all promises of a blissful weekend.

As school time approached, the siblings were all getting ready to board their regular school minibuses. But things went sour within minutes when they were picked up by the wrong minibus.

The rest of the day played out the darkest chapters of one of the most harrowing crimes in Tamil Nadu’s recent history.

Birth of a crime

As planned, Mohan, alias Mohanakrishnan, alias Mohanraj, 27, a taxi driver who met the brothers as a former school minibus driver, picked them up in a minibus he had rented from a friend. Mohanraj had no intention of dropping the innocent brothers off to their school. Instead he drove the van out of the city and joined his collaborator Manoharan (23) in Angalakurichi near Pollachi. According to investigators, the plan was to kidnap the children to demand a high ransom from the family.

Meanwhile, news of the missing siblings spread like wildfire in Coimbatore, prompting police to search for the children and their kidnappers.

But panic and fear of being caught overruled Mohanaraj and Manoharan’s initial plans and their plans took a dire turn; They chose to eliminate the children. Before doing this, they sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl and physically tortured her brother. They drowned the children in a canal belonging to Parambikulam Aliyar Project (PAP).

The police recovered the girl’s body from the PAP canal at Vavipalayam near Pongalur on the same day and night. His brother’s body was recovered from the PAP canal at Kedimedu near Pollachi the next day.

Arrest and encounter

While Mohanraj was arrested on the day of the gruesome crime, his accomplice was arrested two days later on charges including kidnapping, sexual assault, murder and concealment of evidence.

The heinous crime against two school children has deeply shocked the collective conscience of the people and triggered widespread anger over the state of law and order and the safety of children in Tamil Nadu. Public anger had reached boiling point. Opposition parties blamed the then DMK government, headed by M. Karunanidhi as Chief Minister, for alleged failure to save the children.

Following widespread public demand for “immediate justice”, the judicial court on November 8 awarded custody of the two men to the police. The state woke up the next morning to the “big news” as many wanted; The first accused, Mohanraj, was shot dead by the police.

According to the police report, he along with the two accused were heading towards Pollachi around 5.30 am on November 9 to revisit the crime scene. Inspectors Kanagasabapathy and Annadurai accompanied them along with sub-inspectors S. Muthumalai and T. Jothi. While the police vehicle was passing on Vellalore – Podanur Road, Mohanraj snatched Mr. Jothi’s pistol and pressed it on the head of a Head Constable who was driving the vehicle. The driver, who refused to stop the vehicle, opened fire inside the vehicle. While Mr. Jothi was injured in his right arm, a bullet hit Mr. Muthumalai’s left waist area.

While Muthumalai fired two shots at Mohanraj in an act of “self-defence”, Inspector Annadurai fired one bullet at the accused, killing him on the spot.

The then Coimbatore City Police Commissioner C. Sylendra Babu said that the quick response of the police foiled a criminal’s attempt to escape.

Mr Babu and his team were widely hailed by people who demanded “instant justice” and hailed him as a “super cop”. But the police ‘encounter’ also drew scrutiny from civil rights groups. The case related to the encounter has been handed over to the Crime Branch CID for an independent investigation. Years later, the Madras High Court rejected the plea of ​​murder charges against the police officers and ruled that the armed attack fell entirely within the ambit of the right of private defence, protected by law.

Trial of the only surviving defendant

Manoharan was tried in the Coimbatore Mahila Court. On October 29, 2012, marking the exact second anniversary of this heinous crime, Mahila Court Judge Subramanian MP found Manoharan guilty of all crimes, including conspiracy, kidnapping for ransom, sexual assault, murder and destruction of evidence. Deeming this to be the “rarest of crimes”, the court handed down a double death sentence and three concurrent life sentences to Manoharan on 1 November 2012.

The Supreme Court upheld Manoharan’s death sentence on August 1, 2019, ruling that the case was in the “most rare category”.

Welcoming the apex court’s decision, Mr. Muthumalai told The Hindu, “The incident took place before the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses Act came into force. The case was registered under IPC Sections. The police team could have displayed their best investigative skills in the case in the absence of any eyewitnesses regarding the rape and murders.”

It was published – 27 May 2026 06:00 IST