Special teams leave for Chennai to nab accomplices of fake disaster expert

COIMBATORE: The rural police have sent special teams to Chennai and Kanyakumari to nab the accomplices of fake disaster management trainer Arumugam, who helped him forge degrees and certificates. The police teams will also visit certain educational institutions in

Tirunelveli

to collect more information about Arumugam.


Police had on Saturday interrogated Ashok of Pallapalayam in

Erode

, an accomplice of G Arumugam of Vandalur in Chennai, who claimed to be a trainer from the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and conducted a disaster management drill at a private college in Coimbatore on Thursday, resulting in the death of a girl student.

Ashok, a supplier of packaged drinking water, was quizzed at the Karunya Nagar police station. He told police that Arumugam used to pay him Rs 2,000 for assisting him during the drills.

Preliminary inquiry revealed that Arumugam’s parents passed away when he was a school student. “After his relatives refused to support him, Arumugam and his younger brother Gandhiraj approached a textile shop owner in Tirunelveli looking for jobs. But he was denied a job on the grounds that he was affected by polio. He travelled to Kanyakumari from Tirunelveli by train and took shelter in the Kanyakumari Railway Junction for three days. Gnanadas of

Manavalakurichi

in Kanyakumari, who met him there, offered him a job with an NGO in Kanyakumari to take care of HIV-affected children. Arumugam later worked as a hostel warden in a school,” an investigating officer said.

Arumugam told police that he worked as a temporary staff at Christhu Jyothi Higher Secondary School in Tirunelveli and used to teach class XI and XII students. “He taught Commerce and headed the Red Cross Youth unit in the school. He learnt disaster management lessons from there and started to conduct drills in educational institutions. He also told us that he worked as an accountant at Donisha Academy, run by a trust called Corra. He said that the trust helped him get the fake appointment order from the National Disaster Management Authority(NDMA),” the officer told TOI.

After Arumugam said that he is in love with a nurse of a private hospital located on Avinashi Road, a police team interviewed her. “The woman told us that she had befriended him after attending a disaster management drill he conducted while she was a nursing student. But she said she was not in love with him.”

A police team has left for Kanyakumari to meet a college professor after Arumugam claimed to have known her for a long time. Police are also trying to trace the whereabouts of his younger brother.

“He revealed the names of some Chennai residents, who helped him forge the documents. So, we have sent a special team to Chennai also,” a senior police officer said.

Arumugam was lodged at the Coimbatore Central Prison after the judicial magistrate court -II here on Saturday remanded him in judicial custody till July 27.