Hooligans ransack Checkers Hotel

CHENNAI: Organised hooliganism showed its ugly face in the city on Tuesday night when about 100 men stormed the Checkers Hotel near Little Mount and ransacked its premises, besides handing out a life threat to the hotel’s executive director, Vinoj P Selvam.

Earlier, around 10.20 pm, an annonymous caller asked Selvam to produce his friend Siddharth before them within 10 minutes at the hotel. “The caller said that if I failed to produced him in 10 minutes, I will be killed,” Selvam said.

After alerting the police, Selvam rushed to the hotel. But by then the hooligans had landed there in around 25 autorickshaws and three Innova cars (two of them without number plates and one bearing the number TNO6A 0333). He claimed that they caused damages to the hotel to the tune of Rs 25 lakh and took away Rs 3.6 lakh from the hotel lobby.

Hotel deputy manager D Chandra Sekar lodged a complaint with the Guindy police station on the attack and by Wednesday evening, according to police sources, five auto drivers - Vaidvelu, Venkatesan, Arun, Ravi and Krishamurthy - were arrested.

Meanwhile, the mother of Siddharth, whom the hoodlums were looking for, filed a complaint naming the CEO of a popular media house, alleging that some men had barged into her house and attacked her son on Tuesday night.

Sowmithri Dharmasenan of Velachery Road, Guindy, in her complaint, said the men threatened to telecast nude pictures of Siddharth on their television channel.

She said trouble started on August 29 night after her son got into a spat with some persons over parking his vehicle at Neelangarai, where he had gone to drop a friend.

Her son’s car was damaged after the men attacked him and he took refuge inside the friend’s house. Later, a gang, posing to be policemen, took the friend away and made him sign on a blank paper.

After she brought her son home from Neelangarai, she received a call. The caller, who identified himself to be the CEO of a  media house, told her that unless Siddharth fell at his feet and apologised he would not be pardoned.