7 held for stripping couples naked, sexually assaulting, filming them post-girivalam in Tiruvannamalai

Tiruvannamalai: Police on Tuesday night arrested seven goons, including a 16-year-old, for robbing, stripping and sexually assaulting couples who stop to rest or chat at isolated spots on the girivalam path in Tiruvannamalai.

Tiruvannamalai superintendent of police M Sudhakar said that under the guise of moral policing the gang would question couples. They would then drag them into nearby forest areas, strip them naked to take explicit photos and videos, and sexually assault the women. The gang would then extort money threatening to upload their photos on social media and also rob them of any gold or other valuables they carried.

“We formed special teams and nabbed seven of the gang members so far involved in two crimes and recovered the jewels robbed by them,” Sudhakar said. He made it clear that no one had any right to question couples about their antecedents.

The crackdown came after two such criminal assaults during the Vaikasi Pournami (full moon) festival, which drew hundreds of thousands of devotees for the 14km girivalam walk between midday on May 30 and midday on May 31. On the night of May 30, a married woman from the Dharmapuri district, who completed the Girivalam alongside male friends, was returning home. When she and one of her companions stopped briefly near the rocks in the Periya Kolappadi village area, an armed gang brandishing knives ambushed them. The victims were forcibly dragged into the dense woods, where the woman was sexually assaulted, and her gold chain, weighing two sovereigns, was snatched. The gang then stripped both the woman and her friend, and filmed them naked on mobile phones.

The next day, after the victims reached Dharmapuri, the gang called the woman’s phone, demanding ₹1 lakh to not circulate the explicit clips online. Terrified, the victim initially transferred ₹4,000 via UPI transaction, but when the extortion calls intensified, she called the police.

Barely 24 hours later, on the night of May 31, a 23-year-old local woman working at a beauty parlour in Tiruvannamalai completed her girivalam walk. Experiencing severe leg pain near the Adi Annamalai village stretch, she phoned a male friend to pick her up. The duo paused along the Ayyampalayam bypass road to eat snacks.

The same gang ambushed the couple, forced them into the adjacent forest, and subjected them to brutal physical torture, and sexual assault after stripping them naked. The criminals ripped away a two-gram gold earring from the woman and ordered them to transfer money the following day. The traumatised woman reached home and recounted the ordeal to her father, who called the police.

The district police then formed five investigation teams who nabbed the seven goons. The juvenile was sent to an observation home in Cuddalore and the six men to Vellore central prison.

The police teams recovered six mobile phones and three motorcycles from the gang. Preliminary forensic examinations of the seized phones revealed that the gang had completely erased all digital data and media storage files to destroy evidence. The police have dispatched the devices to cyber labs to recover the data.

Investigators suspect this gang may have targeted other couples who chose not to approach the authorities out of fear of social stigma.