The Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) has registered a case against an Additional Deputy Superintendent of Police (ADSP) and a private person on charge of demanding and accepting bribes from two petitioners, who had approached the Coimbatore City Police Commissioner’s officer with a complaint.
The accused have been identified as ADSP M. Gunasekaran (57), principal of the Police Recruitment School in Coimbatore, and his associate D. Praveen (38) of Sriram Nagar at Podanur in the city.
As per the First Information Report registered by the DVAC, A. Nagarajan and K.S. Noorullah, who are doing real estate business, petitioned the Commissioner on June 28, 2023, alleging that V.U. Marudachalam, his sons M. Karthikeyan and M. Kumaresan cheated them with regard to the sale of a property worth ₹6.25 crore at Vellalore in the city. The petitioners stated that they had entered into two unregistered agreements with the trio in 2020 for which an advance amount of ₹ 2.42 crore had been given to them.
As the petitioners proposed to form layouts for sale of plots in the land, they came to know that a civil suit was pending before a court in Coimbatore. When the petitioners demanded to return the advance amount, the sellers entered into a sale agreement with two others on May 18, 2022 and registered the document at the Sub-Registrar Office, Singanallur.
According to DVAC, the complaint of Mr. Nagarajan and Mr. Noorullah was entrusted to Gunasekaran, who was then serving as the Assistant Commissioner of Police, City Crime Branch, Coimbatore City. Gunasekaran negotiated with the petitioners and the counter petitioners. As a result, Marudachalam agreed to return the advance amount of ₹2.10 crore in four instalments.
During the negotiation on July 5, 2023, the police officer insisted the petitioner’s lawyer to arrange 10% of undue advantage from them. He engaged Praveen for the collection of undue advantage from the petitioners.
After several negotiations, the officer demanded ₹5 lakh from the petitioners and coerced them to give ₹1 lakh to Praveen as commission. As per the FIR, Gunasekaran finally demanded and obtained ₹4.4 lakh from the petitioners through Praveen on August 31, 2023, a week after the counter petitioners settled the first instalment of ₹50 lakh. Praveen collected ₹10,000 from Mr. Nagaraj in UPI transaction in the account of his wife Prasanna towards the part payment of the commission fixed by Gunasekaran.
Published – January 02, 2026 07:00 pm IST
