In a case of brutal campus violence, the
principal of an engineering college was
hacked to death by three students at the
college campus India on Thursday morning.
Police arrested the students soon after the
incident though they had managed to flee the
campus.
L R D Sursh, principal of Infant Jesus College of
Engineering, sustained multiple cut injuries in
the attack and was rushed to a government
hospital in the area, but doctors could not save
him. He was 53.
The killers have been identified as P
Pichaikannan (21), a fourth year aeronautical
engineering student from Nazareth near
Tirunelveli, G Dannis (22), a fourth year B Tech
student from Sivaganga and M Prabakaran (21),
a third year BE civil engineering student from
Nagapattinam.
The three students, who had managed to escape
from the campus, were climbing a hillock near
the campus when police, with the help of a few
students, managed to nab them. "We suspect
that the students had meticulously planned the
murder," said M Durai, superintendent of police,
Tuticorin.
Police said one of the students, Pichaikannan,
was suspended two days ago by the principal.
"We suspect that the suspension and humiliation
was the motive for the murder. Dannis and
Prabakaran are friends of Pichaikannan and so
they joined him,'' a police officer investigating
the case said. A college faculty said Suresh had
pulled up Pichaikannan several times in the past
for ragging and harassing girls.
Police said Suresh entered the campus at
Kamaraj Nagar in Keela Vallanadu around
8.30am and was walking towards his office room
when the three students, who were waiting for
him, surrounded him and attacked him with
sickles. Suresh collapsed in a pool of blood.
Students and faculty of the college rushed him
to a nearby hospital, where doctors confirmed
him dead. Later, the body was shifted to the
government hospital for postmortem examination.
Narrating the sequence of incidents that led to
the murder, a police officer said a few days
back, two other students of the college,
Muthuselvan Moses and Adithan from Tuticorin,
had a disagreement and got into a scuffle.
Pichaikannan intervened and arbitrated in the
issue. When the college authorities learnt about
the clash and the kangaroo court that
Pichaikannan organized to settle the issue, they
suspended him along with Muthuselvan and
Adithan. The suspension infuriated Pichaikannan,
who conspired with his friends, Dannis and
Prabakaran, police said.
Suresh, incidentally, had told some his colleagues
that he planned to resign from the college in a
month. A senior faculty member of the college
said that Suresh had felt extreme pressure in
the job. "He was a tough man who was strict with
students. But he used to tell me that he could
not bear the pressure and planned to move out,''
the faculty member, who didn't want to be
named.
A native of Senthamaram, a village near
Sankarankoil in Tirunelveli district, Suresh was a
divorcee and lived with his aged mother and
college-going daughter in Palayamkottai, a town
nearly 20kms away from Vallanadu. He had
served in various colleges and universities across
south Tamil Nadu and joined Infant Jesus
College at its inception seven years ago. The
college management is yet to respond to the
incident, but has declared a holiday for the
college.
The murder spread shock and panic across the
college campus and students and faculty
gathered in large numbers at the government
hospital in Tirunelveli where the principal's body
was kept. T Selvam, inspector of Morappanad
police station which is responsible for law and
order in the college area, said friction between
college authorities and students was common in
the college. "In the past too, students have been
suspended. But the students had not gone to the
extent of assaulting teachers,'' he said.
Campus violence is not unusual in Tamil Nadu,
but it has always been among students. This is
the first time a faculty member has been
targeted. The arrested students have been
booked for murder.