It was a payment made to the hotel’s QR code that allegedly exposed their whereabouts. This week, Thrissur Police arrested six people in connection with the alleged sexual assault of a woman from Malappuram in Keralam and the assault of her male friend from Tamil Nadu, after investigators said the latter’s wife allegedly tracked them down through a payment made to a hotel and allegedly sent a gang to pursue them.

The six people arrested include the man’s wife, who is from Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu. Others arrested are Thomas Priyadarsan Dev, a 27-year-old native of Nilgiris; Regupathi Raja, a 20-year-old from Dindugal; Sankar, a 20-year-old from Karur; and Balraj, a 31-year-old from Kadavur. A magistrate court in Thrissur remanded them to judicial custody for two weeks.

Assistant Police Commissioner T R Rajesh said the wife, whom police have identified as the chief suspect in the case, had known about her taxi-driver husband’s affair for eight years and had him followed.

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“The gang members were all taxi drivers. On the morning of September 22, the victims checked into a hotel while reportedly returning from a trip to Wayanad. Since he needed money, he contacted his wife and shared the hotel’s merchant payment QR code. She paid money to the hotel’s account from her UPI app, which enabled her to locate her husband,” said the assistant commissioner.

Police said the woman then alerted one of the gang. Four others joined him, and they rushed to Thrissur, some 170 km away, and introduced themselves to the hotel as a police team looking for a man from Tamil Nadu who they claimed had stolen 65 sovereigns of gold. Having gained entry, they allegedly stormed into the victims’ room, abducted them and took them back to Tiruppur, where police said the woman was sexually assaulted.

The next day, the woman managed to escape while the group was relocating her. “En route, when the car was stopped somewhere, two passersby grew suspicious when they saw a woman with torn clothes sitting in the car. As the gang fled, the locals helped her reach the nearest railway station and return to Keralam,” the officer said.

Upon reaching Keralam, the woman lodged a complaint with her home district Malappuram police, who in turn transferred the case to Thrissur.

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“The duo (the victims) met in Ernakulam during the taxi driver’s trip to Keralam. The Tamil Nadu man’s wife had been having them for some time. We are checking whether the arrested gang has any recorded criminal antecedents,” one officer.