The Crime Branch CID personnel have taken into custody four former police personnel, who have been convicted in the Padmini rape case, and against whom arrest warrants are pending.
Those taken into custody in the last two days are Mahboob Batcha, former head constable, and Karunanidhi, Jaffer Siddique and Parthasarathy, constables.
While the first three were held on Monday, the fourth one was arrested on Tuesday. All of them have been lodged in Cuddalore Central Prison and will have to serve the remainder of their ten-year sentence.
Padmini, wife of a suspect in a theft case, was gang-raped in 1992. Her husband Nandagopal was taken to the Annamalai Nagar Police Station in Chidambaram for interrogation on May 30, 1992 and kept in custody till June 2, 1992. Nandagopal was beaten to death.
When Padmini went to the police station to meet her husband, she was gang-raped. Of the 11 policemen arraigned in this case, seven were acquitted and four convicted to undergo imprisonment for 10 years. The convicts went in appeal to the Supreme Court, which upheld the conviction of the trial court and the Madras High Court. They spent some years in jail and were later let out on bail. The Supreme Court verdict came on March 29, 2011. The arrest warrant was issued on April 24. Ever since, all four had been absconding.
