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Chennai techie murder: Was it a case of love gone wrong?

In a disturbing incident, 26-year-old Vetrimaran lured his friend R Nandhini, employed as a techie, to a lonely spot, tied her up, slashed her many times and burnt her alive in a suburb of Chennai. The cops say the accused was obsessed with the victim and acted out when she refused his advances

Love can be deadly. Even as people celebrated Christmas and are enjoying the festive season, here’s a horrific tale of a woman techie being chained, slashed and then burnt alive by her former classmate in a southern suburb of Chennai.

The police has arrested 26-year-old Vetrimaran alias Pandi Maheswari, who underwent a sex change operation for the unthinkable torture and murder of R Nandhini. They have revealed that the crime stems from the fact that the accused seemed to be over-possessive.

Here’s what we know of the case – believed to be a love story gone awry.

Murder most foul

On Saturday (24 December), 26-year-old Vetrimaran alias Pandi Maheswari under the pretext of throwing Nandhini a surprise birthday party, lured her to a lonely place in Ponmar in Thalambur police limits and blindfolded her.

According to the police, the transsexual man then chained Nandhini’s hands and feet as a “surprise,” slashed her neck and wrists, emptied a can of petrol and torched her before fleeing from the spot.

Gowtham Goyal, DCP Pallikaranai said, “Around 7:00 to 7:15 pm, he took her to a vacant plot near Ponmar Road. As per the preliminary investigation, he would have blindfolded her under the pretext of presenting a gift. After that, he chained her arms and legs before cutting her wrists and ankles. After that, he poured kerosene on her and left her immolating.”

Investigations reveal that Nandhini and Vetrimaran were old friends and, in fact, studied together while they were back in Madurai. The police investigation states that Nandhini chose to remain friends with Vetrimaran even after Vetrimaran underwent a sex-change operation. Both of them were employed by a private IT firm in Thoraipakkam, which led to a further intertwining of their lives.

Authorities believe that the murder arises from Vetrimaran’s obsession with Nandhini. Vetrimaran, it is believed, had begun arguing with Nandhini if he saw her talking to other men.

Reports state that on 23 December, Vetrimaran called up Nandhini to say that he would not quarrel with her and asked her to meet him as he planned “a surprise” for her birthday. Nandhini agreed to meet Vetrimaran, not knowing what would come next.

The police have revealed that the crime was well-planned and he had plotted the murder for a week.

The incident came to light after locals noticed smoke coming from an old building near Ponmar near Thalambur in Chennai around 7.30 pm on Saturday. When the locals saw smoke emanating from the vacant plot, they went closer to investigate and found a woman lying unconscious with her hands and feet tied and her body burnt with petrol. And even though they immediately rushed into action, calling the ambulance, she succumbed to her wounds in the hospital.

Notably, when Nandhini was rushed to the hospital, she was able to utter a phone number and when officials dialed it, Vetrimaran answered the call and said he was her friend. A police official said, “He came to the spot and helped the police take her to the hospital. It was only later during interrogation that he confessed to his crime.”

The authorities further added that Vetrimaran displayed no signs of remorse for the act he had perpetrated. In fact, in his statement to the police, he said that he was upset over Nandhini refusing to be in a relationship with him. Vetrimaran had gone through a sex-change process at a private hospital a few years back, however Nandhini told him that they had no future together.

Old friends

Nandhini and Vetrimaran’s friendship went way back. They were friends in Madurai since Class I.

After school, Vetrimaran began identifying as a man, owing to which many people cut off contact with him, but not Nandhini. Nandhini’s family reveal that she did not want to hurt her friend and chose to remain in touch with him.

Amudha, Nandhini’s elder sister was quoted as telling the DTNext , “Whenever Vetrimaran would visit Madurai, he would visit our home. I’ve often fed him with my own hands.”

In 2019, Vetrimaran underwent a sex-change operation and left Madurai. Around eight months ago, Nandhini, a BSc graduate in information technology, had got a job in Chennai and had moved to the metro where she and Vetrimaran worked together.

Nandhini’s family, who is grief-stricken by the entire incident, said they couldn’t believe that Vetrimaran had perpetrated such a crime. Nandhini’s father told DTNext , “My daughter had continued the friendship with Vetrimaran on a humanitarian basis. We, as a family, did not have any problem with that.”

He also said, “If Nandhini had told us there was a problem here, we would have definitely helped her in sorting it out. Being empathetic and supportive cost my daughter’s life.”

The accused, Vetrimaran, is now in judicial custody and has been charged with murder. In the meantime, the police also released Nandhini’s body to her family on Sunday. Nandhini’s family is inconsolable. One of them was even quoted as saying, “We saw her burnt body with hands and legs being chained. Is that a way to die? It’s difficult to come to terms with the way her life ended in such a cruel way.”

With inputs from agencies

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Woman techie burnt alive by jilted lover who went through sex-change to marry her

In connection to the murder, the police arrested Vetrimaran, an MBA graduate who had undergone a sex-change operation and was formerly known as Pandi Murugeshwari.

Updated Dec 25, 2023, 2:48 PM IST

According to the police, she had just grown close to one of her colleagues, which prompted Vetrimaran to murder her.

On the eve of her birthday, a 25-year-old software engineer named R Nandhini was brutally murdered in Thalambur, near Kelambakkam on the southern outskirts of Chennai. The assailant, a childhood classmate who had undergone a sex change process to pursue marriage with the victim, allegedly chained, cut, and burned her alive.

The suspect and the victim, Nandhini, shared a history of friendship, having studied together in the same girls' school in Madurai. The arrest followed Nandhini's rejection of Vetrimaran's proposals, leading to strained relations between the two. Despite the fallout, they maintained some degree of communication over time, The Times of India reported.

Eight months prior to the murder, Nandhini, after completing her BSc degree in information technology(IT), secured a job in Chennai and was living with her uncle in the city. On the fateful day, Vetrimaran contacted Nandhini, inviting her to spend time together.

During their meeting, the transsexual man gave her new clothes and took her to an orphanage near Tambaram, where they made a donation. The seemingly normal outing took a horrific turn later on.

He suggested that he will drop her home and stopped at a remote Ponmar location on the way.Vetrimaran requested Nandhini to pose for photos in the lonely region. He then took the chains from his bike and tied her hands and feet while assuring her it was just for fun.

Despite her protests, he later refused to release Nandhini. He used a knife to slit her neck and arms before pouring a bottle of fuel on her and setting her on fire.

Vetrimaran fled the crime scene after committing the heinous act. Locals discovered Nandhini, fighting for her life, and immediately contacted the police. In a desperate attempt to save herself, she provided Vetrimaran's contact number to those who found her.

When the police reached out to him, Vetrimaran shamelessly arrived at the scene, falsely claiming that Nandhini was his friend. He accompanied the police and locals to transport Nandhini to Chromepet's government hospital, all while concealing his monstrous actions.

Nandhini succumbed to her severe injuries late on Saturday. However, by the time of her death, Vetrimaran had already disappeared. He was then tracked down and apprehended by the police on Sunday.

In his statement to the police, he revealed that his horrific actions were driven by resentment over Nandhini's refusal to enter into a relationship with him. Despite undergoing a sex-change process in the past, Nandhini had made it clear that they had no future together.

According to the police, she had just grown close to one of her colleagues, which prompted Vetrimaran to murder her. The accused is in judicial detention, and an inquiry is currently underway.

Also Read: NewsClick HR head to become govt witness in anti-terror case

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#Vetrimaran
#Nandhini murder
#Vetrimaran sex change
#sex change operation

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Woman techie chained, slashed with blade, burnt alive by friend in Chennai

The victim, nandini, was chained up and her wrists, feet and neck were slashed with a blade by her childhood friend, vetrimaran alias pandi maheshwari, before she was set on fire late on saturday..

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A 24-year-old IT professional was chained, slashed and burnt alive by her childhood friend, a trans person, on her birthday on the outskirts of Chennai, police said.

The victim, Nandini, was chained up and her wrists, feet and neck were slashed with a blade by her friend, Vetrimaran alias Pandi Maheshwari, before she was set on fire late on Saturday. The accused was arrested and sent to judicial custody.

Police said Vetrimaran was angry about Nandini drifting away from him and getting purportedly close to others. On the pretext of giving her a birthday surprise, he took Nandini to a secluded place and attacked her, they added.

Locals found the half-burnt body of Nandini and immediately informed the police. She was rushed to a nearby hospital but succumbed to her injuries.

According to the police, Nandini and her friend Vetrimaran alias Pandi Maheshwari were natives of Madurai and studied together till Class 10.

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Over-possessiveness could have led Vetrimaran to kill Nandhini, say police

Chennai: Being empathetic appears to have cost R Nandhini, a software engineer from Madurai, her life. Little did she or her family suspect that her once-school classmate would go to the extent of murdering her.

Her classmate Vetrimaran, a trans-man, made her believe that he would give her a surprise on her birthday eve on Saturday and convinced her to accompany him to a deserted place in Ponmar in Thalambur police limits.

He then blindfolded her and chained her hands and feet as a "surprise," slashed her neck and wrists, emptied a can of petrol and torched her before fleeing from the spot, said police.

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Hearing her cries, a few passers-by alerted the police. However, before she was rushed in an ambulance to the Chromepet Government hospital for treatment, Nandhini gave out the mobile number of Vetrimaran, police said.

"Initially, he came to identify Nandhini and had accompanied her to the GH but later disappeared," a police officer said. He was, however, arrested on Sunday and later remanded in judicial custody.

Police investigation revealed Vetrimaran, 26, then Pandi Maheswari, studied with Nandhini at a school in Madurai. Nandhini had continued her friendship on humanitarian grounds even after Maheswari changed the name to Vetrimaran.

He was in regular touch with her. He got incensed when she started avoiding him. "He became over-possessive when he noticed her talking to other male friends. There was an argument between the two over this," said a police official.

On December 23, on Nandhini's birthday eve, Vetrimaran called her to say he would not quarrel with her and asked her to meet him as he planned "a surprise" for her birthday.

After presenting her new clothes, he took her to an orphanage near Tambaram and made a donation. On the way home, he took Nandhini to Ponmar where he blindfolded her, tied her limbs, inflicted cut injuries on her neck and wrists, doused petrol, torched her, and fled.

After completing her studies, Nandhini moved to Chennai, got employed in a software firm and resided at her paternal uncle's home in Kannagi Nagar here.

While Vetrimaran, residing at Mappedu was in regular touch with her. "Had Nandhini told us there was a problem, we would have helped her. Being empathetic cost Nandhini her life," her father said.

Her elder sister said the family got a call from the police saying her sister had been set afire and that she was dead. On Sunday evening, the police handed over Nandhini's body to her family on her birthday.

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Techie burned alive by ex-classmate who changed sex for her

In a spine-chilling incident in Tamil Nadu, a 24-year-old software engineer, R Nandhini, was allegedly brutally murdered by her former classmate, Vetrimaran, who underwent a sex change operation in hopes of marrying her. The murder took place in Thalambur near Kelambakkam, Chennai , on Saturday. The unsuspecting victim was lured by Vetrimaran—previously known as Pandi Maheswari—under the guise of a birthday surprise. Vetrimaran reportedly blindfolded Nandhini and subjected her to a horrifying ordeal, chaining her up before setting her on fire.

Vetrimaran suspected victim was interested in another man

Per NDTV , Nandhini had been friends with the trans man Vetrimaran since childhood, and their friendship continued even after his gender-affirming surgery. The police said the motive behind this gruesome crime appears to be Vetrimaran's suspicion that Nandhini developed an interest in other men. "He had started quarreling with her over this for...six to eight months and she stopped talking to him. As she was frequently seen with a male colleague, Vetrimaran plotted her murder," a cop said.

Vetrimaran pretended to surprise Nandhini

Speaking to The New Indian Express , a police officer said Vetrimaran took Nandhini to a vacant plot and blindfolded her on the eve of her birthday under the pretext of presenting a gift. "He bound her arms and legs with two chains and locks. He then slashed her wrists and ankles before immolating her...then he left the spot," they said. Passersby reached the spot upon hearing her screams. They admitted her to a hospital, where she succumbed to her injuries.

Nandhini succumbed to burn injuries in hospital

The locals informed the police before shifting Nandhini to the hospital, and she even managed to give them a phone number. When they called on that, Vetrimaran answered and told them he was her friend. Notably, information collected from Nandhini's colleague, who knew about her plans with Vetrimaran, helped cops zero in on him. "He came to the spot and helped the police take her to the hospital. However, during interrogation, he confessed to the crime," the police officer said.

Significant rise in murders by romantic partners

As authorities continue to investigate the brutal murder, it has left the quiet southern suburb of Chennai shaken. According to cops, besides being childhood friends, she and Vetrimaran worked at an IT firm in Thoraipakkam. Therefore, their lives were intertwined further. Cold-blooded murders—particularly involving romantic partners—have seen a significant rise in India. In May 2022, Shraddha Walkar was murdered by her live-in partner Aftab Poonawalla, who chopped her body and disposed of it over months. The incident triggered nationwide outrage.

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Viduthalai: Part 1

A police officer is recruited to capture the leader of a separatist group. A police officer is recruited to capture the leader of a separatist group. A police officer is recruited to capture the leader of a separatist group.

Vetrimaaran
Vijay Sethupathi
Bhavani Sre
73 User reviews
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1 win & 9 nominations

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Constable Kumaresan

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Trivia It's inspired from a poem of Lyrist Na.Muthukumar.
Goofs The film is set in the late 1980s. However, when Kumaresan is introduced by Head Constable Chandran to a tea-selling undercover militant, the SBI bank's new board design---introduced after 2017, is shown. Also, near the bank, an Activa (introduced in India in the 2000s) is parked.
Connections Features Maithili Ennai Kathali (1986)

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Ranking Vetrimaaran Films — From Polladhavan to Viduthalai Part 1

Ranking Vetrimaaran’s films — excluding the short films he made — can feel like picking a winner from a competition of despair. And yet, because of the artistry, his films end up challenging his own filmography; building on his flaws, adopting newer visual languages to express older tropes of a violent world.

Beginning with Polladhavan (2007), his films increasingly hold you in a brusque, violent, and breathless chokehold. Visaranai (2016), his third and most celebrated film, which was even sent to the Academy Awards as India’s nomination, is best described as a relentless marathon of brutality. Every time you think the film has let go, like steam released from a pressure cooker, the plot tightens into lashings and screams.

That none of this violence feels gratuitous is because of how normal violence feels in the world Vetrimaaran creates on screen. When characters die, they just do. When they are violated, they just are. Is this violence repetitive? Yes. But does it feel repetitive? No, because his films are not hinged on stylized violence. He doesn’t need to find innovative ways to stage it, since his films are about the contexts in which violence begins to feel like an everyday phenomenon — brutal but, like air, everywhere. It is these contexts that keep changing — from Madurai to Vada Chennai (North Chennai), Andhra Pradesh to the forested hills of Tamil Nadu — and the violence remains unsettlingly natural to all of them.

6) Polladhavan (2007)

The opening credit of “non-linear editor”, the voiceover narration, and the opening shot yanking you into a flashback in Polladhavan — Vetrimaaran’s debut film is preoccupied with time flipping over itself, bending, contorting, staring at a bloody present and then tracing backwards to how we reached this bloodbath. The film follows the fallout after its happy-go-lucky protagonist Prabhu (Dhanush) loses his bike, and comes in contact with first an insecure underworld and then the inefficient blackhole of the police station. There is a visual recklessness, almost a disenchantment with stillness in the film. When the image does become still, it is usually like a jerk — either a photograph or a forceful pausing of the frame. Here is a director who refuses to be bound by conventional framing and narrative. He will bung in two narrative voiceovers — what Preston Sturgess called “narratage”. He will place the camera between two vessels on the gas, the foreground of coffee being flipped from tumbler to tumbler, with Prabhu entering from behind.

Polladhavan is dated in the sense that you see a director struggling with his style and the template that he wants to both tap into and wreck open — the grating dream songs of love and amorous celebration in a disco, for example. Vetrimaaran himself said in an interview with Film Companion , “From Polladhavan , I learnt I should never make a film like that.”

5) Aadukalam (2011)

We begin in the present, but return to it only in the last half hour of this film. Karuppu (Dhanush) is a masterful cockfighter, but the Othello-like machinations of jealousy lead his mentor (played by V.I.S. Jayapalan) to exact violence by slowly chipping away at Karuppu’s reputation through gossip and cross-speak. And yet, as Karuppu’s fortunes balloon, his love for his mentor is never challenged. His mentor’s rejection of him never translates to Karuppu’s resentment. It is the kind of mythological devotion Ekalavya showered on Drona — one incapable of rancour. Blind love, as director Vetrimaaran notes in an interview with Film Companion , can be most dangerous.

The “centrepiece” — where Karuppu has to make his cock fight, not once, but thrice in the dust-flung competition,— is a grunting, unending tapestry of tension. It cemented Vetrimaaran as a director with a vision that drew from the well of Cine Madurai violence while cutting against it, stamping his distinct visual style, his trademark panting exposition in the beginning and his casual irreverence towards heroism. In the first “action scene” Karuppu is given, the camera is static, staring at the fight like a spectator, watching as Dhanush’s lithe frame tries to pummel the goons.

Aadukalam ends with Karuppu escaping the scene with his Anglo-Indian lover (Taapsee Pannu), not wanting to explain himself to those who have misunderstood him or been manipulated into believing incorrect things about him. It’s a rare, mature narrative closing that shows a protagonist who is okay being thought of as wrong, even though he was wronged. If that means keeping the memory of his mentor — who orchestrated the manipulation — unsullied, so be it.

4) Visaranai (2015)

Visaranai felt like an aesthetic sharp-turn for Vetrimaaran, showing us that as a director, he is capable of patient storytelling, linear storylines; neat, spare flashbacks, that unfold at the pace of life, without sizzling it up or slurring it down. The only throbbing background score in the film is that of ominous rain and crickets.

Perhaps, because the film is based on events that are true and shocking, Visaranai looks as though it is “captured” and not “shot” as a film (look at these violent words used to describe cinema). It does not even have that “centrepiece” moment of bloodshed that Vetrimaaran usually places carefully somewhere in the middle. It does not need it. The film, based on accounts of police custodial violence — first in Andhra Pradesh to poor Tamil Nadu migrants, then in Tamil Nadu to a white collar auditor — yanked from M. Chandrakumar’s novel Lock Up , is brimming with blood. The centrepiece, if anything, is that moment of quiet, of silence, of hope, that comes in little snatches before it is pulled away.

The cinematic virtue of this film is its relentless violence which never feels gratuitous. What differentiates one from another? Here is violence treated as life — without drama, without emphasis. A rare restraint that nonetheless produces horror unlike in another film — by Vetrimaaran or anyone else.

3) Vada Chennai (2018)

With Vada Chennai , Vetrimaaran returns to the titular North Chennai where he shot his debut film. This time, however, there is more blood, more history, and more politics, and a richer, denser world full of human foibles and fumbles. The detailing is more vivid — like prisoners snorting lizard tails to get high. The violence is more structural — it telescopes its attention on a neighbourhood over time, not a group of friends like in Visaranai .

Like Aadukalam , Vada Chennai starts with bloodshed, which it returns to in the last half-hour. Unlike Aadukalam, this structure feels perfunctory, because the beginning is almost forgotten in the blitzkrieg of rat-a-tat action centred around Anbu (Dhanush), a sincere carrom player, who gets caught in the crossfire of a gang war that he further curdles and erupts.

This is a hypnotic movie, moving across time, back and forth, sometimes a flashback within a flashback. If you pause the film, turn and ask what year the events are taking place, it takes a moment because of how much is churning in the story. The death of M.G. Ramachandran and Rajiv Gandhi are used as temporal walking sticks to help us wade through the film. The original cut for Vada Chennai was 5.5 hours long, and the reason we feel scenes end abruptly with moments often collapsing as they begin, is because of the unsparing edit to bring it down to 2.5 hours. The action, the relentless throw of context, dialogue, and exposition, keeps you afloat, as though you were being swept away in an furiously rushing river.

What sets Vada Chennai apart is not just Anbu as an ambivalent hero who is swept into heroism by circumstances, but a hero who is unsure of who is right and who is wrong. He expresses this moral dilemma to his wife in a moving scene. There is a sense that if this film was narrated from another perspective, it might easily flip the moral labels we have slapped on characters. That a film allows its characters this latitude is a triumph of an expanded, exploded imagination — both moral and literary.

2) Asuran (2019)

Both Vada Chennai and Asuran are, perhaps, the most cinematic of Vetrimaaran’s films — with a slow-motion pay-off that belongs to the masala template, lodged comfortably alongside the various Vetrimaaran-isms. Both insert their intermission after a rousing action sequence that disarms you with its style and emotional punch. However, while Vada Chennai is impatient in its storytelling — by narrative design and editorial desperation — Asuran digs deeper.

The first shot of the film, of a moon among milky clouds, crumples when feet are placed over it — we realise that we were seeing a reflection of the moon over still water, which is now being trampled over by escaping feet, that of Sivasaami (Dhanush) and his son Chidambaram (Ken Karunas). Chidambaram has just hacked the man who murdered his elder brother — an act of vengeance that dislocates his family, who are now fugitives.

Asuran perfects a lot of Vetrimaaran’s pursuits — the mass film without the mass conventions. There is no hero entry scene. There is, instead, the intermission block. There is no hip dangling love. There is, instead, trauma and affection. Humour does not exist, distilled in the form of a separate character, like a court jester. It is baked into the exchanges. There is no beauty, no polish. There is a harsh abruptness with which scenes transition. And yet, Asuran has packed in it the most potent scenes of grief and redemptive violence. It is Vetrimaaran allowing his films to char your heart, not just your senses. The second half gives the origin for Sivasaami’s docile nature, one that he has arrived at after a youth of bloodshed that left him orphaned and without love. This mirroring of the two halves is another beautiful Vetrimaaran-ism — from the slippers, to the heroism, to the tragedy that culminates in an escape. It is easy to dismiss this film as templated, but there is a reason templates have survived the onslaught of genre, taste, and time shifts. That it is predictable does not take away from what an artist can do with and within that predictability. Asuran is Vetrimaaran’s most emotionally staining — not draining, but staining — film; its violence lingering as hurt, not horror.

1) Viduthalai Part 1 (2023)

In one sense, Viduthalai is the culminating artistic collaboration between Vetrimaaran and cinematographer Velraj, who has lensed all of Vetrimaaran’s films except Visaranai . The opening shot of around 10 minutes takes us, in one sweeping, single take, through the debris of a train bombing. The sheer audacity of the scene, the lubricated ease with which the camera slides, both vertically and horizontally, sets the stage for Kumeresan (Soori), a kind-hearted police officer who has been sent to the forested hills as part of a police force that is trying to weed out an extremist group. It invokes awe while depicting horror. The dense prologue, the unfussy heroism of Vetrimaaran are both here. The politics is just as long winded and stiff — like how Vada Chennai questioned development, here, too, the story hinges on how the state uses development as a cover for profiteering; the police, here, too, are brutal beasts. Love comes as a reprieve — both to the character and the narrative.

But what marks Viduthalai apart is how it makes violence seem so routine, Vetrimaaran isn’t even interested in sharpening it. There is a blunt relentlessness to it. It is not that the director can’t show violence that whips our moral sense of the world. It’s just impossible to fixate and linger on violence the way he did in the previous films. In Visaranai what was happening to a group of friends, in Asuran what was happening to a family, is, in Viduthalai happening to a whole movement of people. Vetrimaaran employs a disenchanted cutting away from these moments before their full impact is even felt, for the impact is not in its festering but in its unrelentingness.

If you notice closely, these rankings are in the order of Vetrimaaran’s filmography, suggesting that, at least artistically, he seems to be streamlining ahead, a swift, sure motion away from where he first began.

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Tamil Nadu: Friend chains woman on birthday claiming it was for fun, kills her

Police said the accused, who was renamed vetrimaran after undergoing a gender-affirming surgery, murdered r nandani as he was enraged that she broke off with him.

A 26-year-old slit a friend’s throat with a blade and set her ablaze after chaining her hands and legs claiming it was for fun at a deserted spot on her 26th birthday over the weekend in Tambaram near Tamil Nadu’s Chennai, police said on Monday.

Police said Vetrimaran doused petrol and set her ablaze. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Police said that the accused, who was renamed Vetrimaran after undergoing a gender-affirming surgery a few months ago, murdered R Nandani as he was enraged that she broke off with him and was getting closer to a colleague at her work.

Vetrimaran was arrested on Sunday. Police said and he confessed to murdering Nandani, who worked in a software company in Chennai.

Police said that Nandani and Vetrimaran were schoolmates at a girl’s school in Tamil Nadu’s Madurai district and were close friends. On Saturday, Vetrimaran spent the day with Nandani and took her to the deserted spot, where he chained her hands and legs claiming it was for fun despite her pleas not to do so.

Police said that Vetrimaran doused petrol on her and set her ablaze. Nandani was rushed to a hospital, where she died late on Saturday night.

Tambaram police commissioner Amalraj told NDTV that the two were friends and lived together in Chennai. “No indication yet of any sexual assault. Whether Vetrimaran had displayed violent tendencies earlier is not clear. An investigation is on,” he added.

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Vetrimaaran reveals when 'Vada Chennai 2' will begin

Vetrimaaran reveals when 'Vada Chennai 2' will begin

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Vetrimaran's 'Viduthalai' to release in two parts

Poster of Vetrimaran's 'Viduthalai'.(Photo | PTI)

CHENNAI: Ace director Vetrimaran's eagerly-awaited upcoming film,'Viduthalai', featuring Soori in the lead and actor Vijay Sethupathi as 'Vaathiyaar', will release in two parts, its makers have now announced. Interestingly, both parts of the film -- 'Viduthalai' and 'Viduthalai-2' -- are to be presented by actor, producer and politician Udhayanidhi Stalin's production house, Red Giant Movies. The shooting of 'Viduthalai-1' has already been completed and post-production work is on in full swing. Only a few portions are left to wrap up the shooting of 'Viduthalai-2', which is currently happening in Sirumalai and Kodaikannal. Produced by RS Infotainment's Elred Kumar, the 'Viduthalai' franchise is being made on a whopping budget. The film's grandeur has been generating a strong buzz. Only recently, a train and Railway bridge set worth Rs 10 crore was erected for the film. The train compartments as well as the bridge were made using the same materials that engineers use to manufacture trains and build bridges. Earlier, the art department headed by Jackie had erected a huge village set in Sirumalai. The makers of 'Viduthalai' say that it is an intense story that needs proper storytelling to make sure it appeals to the audience. It is for this reason that they say they decided to break the story into two different parts. Currently, preparations for shooting a breath-taking action sequence between Vijay Sethupathi and Soori are going on in Kodaikanal. Peter Hein is choreographing this action sequence in which a group of proficient stuntmen from Bulgaria will be a part. The star cast of 'Viduthalai' includes Vijay Sethupathi, Soori, Bhavani Sre, Prakash Raj, Gautham Vasudev Menon, Rajeev Menon and Chethan. Maestro Isaignani is composing music for 'Viduthalai', which features cinematography by Velraj.

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