Stopped at border, vendor swims across Cauvery to meet daughter in TN hosp, drowns
With borders closed and the lockdown still in place, a 45-year-old fruit vendor, who frantically wanted to admit his daughter to Mettur Government Hospital for delivery, tried to swim across the Cauvery to enter the State from Karnataka. However, he drowned. The woman’s husband is from Karnataka and she is a native of Tamil Nadu.
By : migrator
Update: 2020-04-21 21:00 GMT
Coimbatore
Police said Perumal, 45, from Pallipalayam in Namakkal district and his relative Venkatachalam were accompanying the former’s pregnant daughter in a car from Karnataka to Mettur Government Hospital. The daughter has now been admitted.
“The police asked the duo to alight from the car at the border, while the daughter was allowed to pass. It was then that they decided to swim across the Cauvery and reach Mettur,” a police officer said. They embarked upon the river journey on Sunday afternoon.
After an hour, Venkatachalam managed to reach the shore on Palar area but Perumal did not surface. On receiving information, the fire and rescue personnel began a search operation on Monday and found his body later in the day.
The police were in a fix over jurisdiction issues. Information on the retrieval of the body was first given to Karnataka police, who refused to take up the case as the body was found in TN. A disagreement also ensued between Salem and Erode police.
The cops then arrived at a truce as Bargur police registered a case and the body was handed over to family members after a post mortem.
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