Ongole court sentences 11 to death including Munna

Ongole: Ongole district court on Monday sentenced highway killer Munna and 10 others to death. Munna and his gang were accused of stopping lorries on the highway posing as policemen and killing drivers and cleaners. Four such cases came to light in the year 2008 and 18 persons were found guilty.

The police investigation found that Munna gang, disguised as policemen, used to stop vehicles on the highway under the pretext of checking.

They were found guilty of murdering seven persons in four cases in Ongole limits. After killing Tamil Nadu lorry driver Ramasekhar and cleaner Perumal Subramani near Ulavapadu, the gang sold the 21.7 tons of iron in the lorry to a leading merchant in Guntur. The bodies of the driver and cleaner were packed in gunny bags and buried on the banks of
Inumanamelluru Gundlakammavagu in Kukki Maddipadu mandal.

On October 17, 2008, a lorry owner Veerappan Kuppuswamy lodged a complaint with Ongole police saying that his lorry, with driver and cleaner and laden with 21.7 tons of iron rods from Durgapur of West Bengal went missing. During the investigation, the police found that Syed Abdul Samad alias Munna gang was involved in it and launched a manhunt.

Munna tried to leave the country. However, police arrested him in the farmhouse of a former MLA in Karnataka and brought him to Ongole.