Now, Pottu Suresh charged with extortion

MADURAI: In yet another extortion case, the central crime branch (CCB) police filed an FIR against five persons, including close aide of Alagiri, ‘Pottu’ Suresh, who is already in prison, a DIG of Police (Registration), Tiru­chy, two doctors and a doctor’s wife  here on Monday.Subsequently, the police arrested DIG of Registration S Annamalai (54), Dr S Navaneethakrishnan, a private doctor, and S  Saravanmuthu (47), working in Government Rajaji Hospital (GRH). Sankari, the wife of Saravanamuthu, is yet to be arrested.Police said that, G Ponmani had lodged a complaint with the CCB stating that her husband Ganesh (43), was working as a software engineer in Singapore and his two brothers were also working as engineers in America. With a plan to construct a hospital in Madurai, they had approached their relative Dr Saravanamuthu. Then, they had established a hospital (Sri Hospital, Arappalayam) with an investment of a few crore of rupees.  In her complaint, she alleged that Saravanamuthu had not produced the financial statement of the hospital for a long time.  Later, when she checked the accounts, Ponmani found out that the doctor had swindled `1.25 crore.  Irked by this, Ponmani tried to take legal action against the doctor. Hence, Saravanamuthu with the help of Dr Navanee­thakrishnan met ‘Pottu’ Suresh and asked him to intervene in the issue to solve it amicably.  They also called up Ponmani to have talks with ‘Pottu’ Suresh and they threatened her to register the hospital in their name at a cheap rate.  Annamalai, who was working as DIG of Registration Department in Madurai, had helped them to register the document compromising the rules and regulation.Based on the complaint, the CCB police filed a case against the five persons under section 365 , 368, 384, 477(a), 166, 506, 124(b) and 420 IPC.As the accused Suresh is already in jail under the Goondas Act, the police produced the three arrested persons before the Chief Judicial Magistrate in Madurai District Court and remanded them to judicial custody.Further, the Madurai district court has also permitted the rural police to take ‘Pottu’  Suresh into custody for one day to interrogate him in connection with a murder case.