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TNSTC bus set ablaze at Erode, 18 DMK men held

By R. Sundaram

Erode April 12. A State-owned Corporation bus was torched and the rear glass of another TNSTC bus damaged by miscreants here at midnight last night.

In this connection 18 DMK functionaries, including the Erode North district secretary, N. K. K. P. Raja, were arrested this morning and remanded. The police are looking for a few more persons.

According to the police, the Coimbatore-Erode bus was returning to the shed at 11.45 p.m., when seven or eight persons, riding mopeds, waylaid it and within seconds poured petrol and set it afire before fleeing.

The bus was reduced to a skeleton and the driver and the conductor, who jumped out of the vehicle, sustained burns.

The crew, who were undergoing treatment in the Erode Government Headquarters Hospital, said the miscreants, after burning the bus, shouted ``Thalapathy Stalin vazhga''.

Hundred metres away, the same group stopped a Tiruchi-Erode TNSTC bus near the Goods Shed, and attacked it with hockey sticks and cricket bats. They then drove away on the numberless mopeds.

The police suspect that the incidents were a sequel to the arrest of the DMK youth wing leader, M. K. Stalin.

The Superintendent of Police, P. Balasubramanian, who rushed to the spot, formed a special team to nab the criminals and a manhunt was launched. Police pickets were strengthened on all routes in and around Erode.

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