The Coimbatore District (Rural) Police on Wednesday arrested 10 persons on the charge of beating an unidentified man to death, suspecting him to be a thief, at Chithirai Chavadi near Alandurai.
Though the accused had dumped the body of the man in river Noyyal on Pooluvapatti – Thennamanallur road, the police found that he had died of assault by a group of people.
The arrested, all hailing from Chithirai Chavadi and Pooluvapatti areas, have been identified as K. Viswanathan (39), his father A. Kaliappan (56), K. Sampathkumar (41), K. Duraisamy (50), C. Karthik (31), P. Ganesh (37), B. Jeganathan (45), A. Ponnusamy (52), R. Jothiraj (50) and C. Saravanakumar (44).
The police said that three men attempted to break into a house of Kaliappan at Chithirai Chavadi on the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday. The trio allegedly showed a knife to threaten the family members.
Kaliappan, Viswanathan and Sampathkumar managed to nab one of the three men with the help of seven neighbours.
The group, according to the police, tied up the man and assaulted him. After finding the man unconscious, they shifted him in a vehicle around 4 a.m. on Tuesday and dumped him in the river.
The body was spotted by residents of the locality on Tuesday morning and the police shifted it to the mortuary of the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital.
The police questioned people in the locality and came to know that the deceased person was in the custody of the accused.
The 10 persons were arrested on Wednesday.
The police said that the post-mortem will be performed after confirming the identity of the deceased.
