The Madurai Special Court has convicted 10 people, including Yuvraj, in the Gokulraj massacre case of an engineering graduate.
On June 23, 2015, Gokulraj, an engineering graduate from Omalur in Salem district, went to college and did not return home. Gokulraj’s mother Chitra had lodged a complaint with the police. Following a complaint, the police searched for Gokulraj and recovered his decapitated body near the Namakkal Thottipalayam railway track.
Yuvraj, the founder of the Sankagiri Deeran Chinnamalai County Council, and his associates were found to be involved in the murder and all were arrested. The investigation revealed that Yuvraj and his accomplices, who saw Gokulraj on the list talking to a woman of a different race, blindfolded him, changed his friend’s car number, loaded him with it, threatened to record a video of him committing suicide on his cell phone and forced him to write a suicide note. The investigation also revealed that Gokulraj was brutally beheaded near the railway tracks and killed after he threw the woman’s cellphone into the river and left. The autopsy also proved that Gokulraj was videotaped committing suicide by committing suicide and then killing and throwing his body on the tracks. The main culprits, Yuvraj and his car driver Arun, both went into hiding.
DSP Vishnupriya, who was investigating the case of manslaughter, committed suicide by hanging on September 18 of the same year. The case was thus transferred to the Namakkal CPCIT. Yuvraj, who was wanted in the murder case, posted the video and audio on social media, which was the talk of the town at the time. Following this, Yuvraj Namakkal, who was in hiding on October 11, 2015, surrendered at the CPCIT office.
After the chargesheet was filed in the case, Namakkal came up for hearing in the Special Sessions Court. Gokulraj’s mother Chitra has filed a case in the Chennai High Court alleging irregularities in the trial there. At the trial there, 17 people were charged. One of them died and one of the remaining 16 went missing. A chargesheet was then filed against 15 people and an investigation was launched.
The case was then transferred to the Madurai Magistrate’s Court in 2019. A total of 106 witnesses have been questioned in the case. A further 500 documents and 74 testimonials were submitted. Since then, the Madurai Special Court has convicted 10 people in the case. The court also said that the sentence details of 10 people, including Yuvraj, who was convicted, would be released on the 8th. Shankar, Arul Senthil, Selvakumar, Thangathurai and Suresh have been released in the case.