COIMBATORE: The 24-year-old disabled youth who had been reported missing from a care home in Pollachi was beaten to death by the trustees and staff at the facility on May 12, Coimbatore district rural police revealed on Saturday. Police arrested four people in connection with the murder.

Police exhumed the body of the young man, SR Varunkanth, from the farmland owned by the trust at S Nagoor near Nadupuni in Pollachi in the presence of the Pollachi sub-collector in-charge and the tahsildar and handed it over to his parents after postmortem on Saturday evening.

Varunkanth hailed from Karavali Mathappur in Sulur Block. According to the FIR registered based on his parents’ complaint, he had Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

T Ravikumar and Banumathi had admitted their son at the Yuthira Charitable Trust (Special Children Care and Training Centre) at Rathinasabapathy Puram in Pollachi in February. They had approached the police after the home claimed that Varunkanth had gone missing during the home’s outing to Aliyar Dam on May 15.

Police on Saturday said that, in fact, the youth had been murdered and buried on May 12.

“The trustees refused to take Varunkanth to a theme park in Mettupalayam, claiming that he was not obeying them. They took the other inmates and left him alone at the home.

"This has caused the youth a lot of embarrassment and he apparently behaved aggressively. The trustees and staff at the home got angry and started beating him with cricket bats and plastic pipes. They continued assaulting the youth, till he fell unconscious and died,” a senior police official said.

The suspects then allegedly wrapped the body in a plastic cover and transported it by auto to the farmland. There they dug at least five pits before burying the body and planting a sapling over the site, police said. To mask any odours, they sprayed cow dung mixed with water after burying him, police added.

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