Police on Saturday arrested the warden of the hostel in Pollachi, from where >two minor girls were kidnapped and raped, on the charge of running it without a valid licence.
Based on a complaint from the Social Welfare Department, police arrested the hostel warden, Sureshkumar, for running the hostel without valid licence for the last 20 years and keeping the inmates without adequate security, police said.
Meanwhile the key accused in the rape, 23-year-old >Veerasami, who was picked up from Udumalpet in nearby Tirupur district on Friday based on a tip—off, was arrested on Saturday evening.after preliminary interrogation.
Police said there was already a rape case filed against Veerasami some months ago, when he allegedly sexually assaulted a beggar woman near Pollachi.
Police are also on the look out for one Bhagyanathan, a worker in the >hostel which is run by the Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Church .
Some officials from TELC, Tiruchirapalli, have come to Pollachi to take stock of the situation, police said.
The girls, aged 10 and 11 and inmates of the hostel in Pollachi, about 35 km from here, were forcibly taken from the hostel and raped on the terrace of an adjacent building reportedly at knifepoint by two persons who approached them in the wee hours of June 12 on the pretext of asking for water.
The girls were rescued and admitted to Pollachi Government Hospital by police, after the inmates, one of whom was thrashed by the rapists, informed the hostel management, who in turn alerted police.
Meanwhile, police denied permission to Arjun Sampath, president, Hindu Makkal Katchi to visit the hostel and the girls in the hospital.
