The Tamil Nadu Police Crime Branch, after a week-long investigation, arrested the 58-year-old retired Lt Col Kandaswamy Ramraj, a native of Madurai, who has been booked under Section 302 (relating to murder) of IPC.
"We have got a major breakthrough in the Dilshan murder case. We confronted the retired Army officer with physical witnesses and evidences which made him to confess," CB-CID ADGP R Sekar told reporters on the killing of Dilshan who fell to the bullet when he trespassed into the Army residential quarters last Sunday to pluck mangoes and almonds.
Stating that the retired Army officer got annoyed by the frequent trespassing of the boys to pluck mangoes and almonds, he said, "this led him to shoot from his rifle from a balcony at the time of incident".
Sekar said that though initially police came to know there were only three children at the time of incident it later came to light that there was a fourth boy who informed them about a senior Army man who tried to erase the evidence, he said.
With the help of the fourth boy, police could zero in on Ramraj who initially refused to admit that he owned a licensed weapon but later confessed that he had applied for the renewal of license with the suburban police, he said.
"He has got the 0.3mm rifle from Jabalpur in 2004 and the license was valid till 2008. But since then he had not renewed the license and recently, he had applied for the renewal at the suburban police. Even the Army personnel did not know he was holding a rifle without license," he said.
Ramraj, an Assistant Engineer (Arms section), admitted that he threw the rifle in the Cooum river here along with the bullets, Sekar said.
"With the help of fire tenders we were able to recover the weapon imported from United States and efforts are on to locate the bullets," he said, adding that the car used for hiding the weapon was also seized.
Sekar said Ramraj would be produced in the George Town Special Court later today.
Dilshan, residing in the Indira Gandhi Nagar locality adjacent to the Army quarters in the Island Grounds locality, fell victim to a mysterious bullet when he tried to pluck almond fruit from the army residential area.
The victim's family had alleged he was shot by an Army personnel.
The post-mortem report had earlier established that a bullet injury had killed Dilshan when he scaled the Army campus.
An Army officer in the rank of Lt Colonel and some others were questioned in the past few days in connection with incident.
Condemning the incident, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa had said the teenager was killed by an Army jawan and had written to the General Officer Command requesting that the culprit be handed over to the state police.
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