Police seek ID parade for doctor’s killers

CHENNAI: The city police have filed a petition before a magistrate’s court to conduct a witness identification parade in Puzhal Central Prison of the suspected contract killers who attacked eminent neurologist S D Subbiah in full public view, leading to his death on September 23 last year.
The murderous attack nine days earlier, on September 14, one of the goriest crimes in the city in recent times, was caught on a security camera in a house opposite the crime scene near Billroth Hospital in Raja Annamalai Puram.The footage was too grainy to be admissible as evidence in court.
However, there were several witnesses to the crime, who saw three assailants hacking Subbiah with cleavers till he collapsed before they fled, assuming the surgeon was dead.
The city police on Thursday said they had arrested the hired killers in Kanyakumari and identified them as I Murugan, 25, S Selva Prakash, 23, both from Panagudi, and P Iyyappan, 24, from Thalavaipuram in Virudhunagar district. They also arrested a doctor, James Satish Kumar, who worked as a doctor in ESI Hospital, Tirunelveli, for hiring the killers. Prosecutors hope to establish through witness testimony that they were indeed Subbiah’s killers.
Investigators believe P Ponnusamy, a retired schoolteacher, his wife P Mary Pushpam and their sons Boris and Basil, a lawyer and a close associate of Satish Kumar, ordered the contract killing to grab properties owned by Subbiah in Kannankulam and Anjugramam, near Kanyakumari, that are estimated to be worth 12 crore.
Basil and Boris had surrendered in a magistrate’s court in Saidapet on September 24 and Ponnusamy and Mary Pushpam surrendered to the Coimbatore police on September 28.
Investigators have filed a separate petition in the chief metropolitan magistrate’s court in Egmore, seeking that a magistrate be assigned to conduct the identification parade.
In the identification parade, the three suspects will be made to stand in a row alongside other criminals and witnesses, whose identity police will protect, will point out the men they saw commit the crime. The process will be monitored by the magistrate and a report by him on the identification parade will be included as evidence before the trial court.
“The identification parade will be held within a week,” an investigating officer said.
Ponnusamy, Mary Pushpam, Basil and Boris have maintained that they are innocent. The Madras high court granted them bail on the condition that they stay in the city and appear before investigating officers at the Abiramapuram police station regularly.