Chennai: Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Court in Egmore has directed Tamil Nadu Crime Branch CID police to produce environment activist R S Mugilan at court in Karur in connection with a rape case registered against him months ago in Karur district. On Tuesday, CB-CID police produced him before the magistrate after discharging him from Stanley government general hospital. The judge directed the police to produce him before the court in Karur within 24 hours.
Mugilan was arrested on Sunday on a complaint from a 37-year-old woman at the Kulithalai all-women police station alleging that he had forced her to have sex with him multiple times after promising marriage. In her complaint made about two months after Mugilan vanished, the 'victim' woman alleged that he had sexually exploited her when both stayed at a lodge during a protest at Neduvasal in Pudukottai district against the hydrocarbon project in February 2017.
Mugilan had gone missing soon after holding a press conference on February 15 at Chennai, where he named a couple of senior police officers and alleged they were complicit with miscreants who torched government vehicles and damaged CCTV cameras at the anti-Sterlite rally in Thoothukudi, where 13 people died in police firing. He had boarded a train at Egmore for Madurai on the night of February 15 and vanished thereafter.
Mugilan's disappearance triggered worldwide campaign on social media demanding a probe and there were demonstrations in USA and Australia too. Politicians and NGOs also raised protests and Amnesty International sought investigation into Mugilan's disappearance. Rights activist Henri Tiphagne moved the Madras high court with a habeas corpus petition seeking police action to produce Mugilan.
