MADURAI: A 35-year-old mentally unsound woman and her father were killed by a group of youths, including a relative, when she resisted their attempts to rape her at Surakudi in Tuticorin district in the early hours of Sunday.

The murder of Rajalakshmi, 35, and her father Perumal, 80, of Nickel Nagar, near Vembar, came to light Sunday morning when neighbours found Perumal’s dead body lying outside his house. They alerted the district police and a team from the Surakudi police station reached the spot. The search for Rajalakshmi led the police to a nearby coconut grove where they found her naked dead body.

The police sent the dead bodies to the government hospital for postmortem.

Preliminary investigations revealed that Rajalakshmi and her relative, Adhisaya Paralogaraja, 22, had sexual relationship for a long time. Neighbours told police that Paralogaraja was a frequenter visitor at the house.

Based on this information, police nabbed Paralogaraja. During the interrogations, it was revealed that he visited the house on Saturday night after Perumal slept and, as usual, he had sex with Rajalakshmi. However, she protested when he asked her to have sex with a few of his friends who were waiting outside the house. His friends entered the house and attempted to rape her, and she raised an alarm.

Hearing her cries, Perumal woke up and found the men trying to rape his daughter. Sensing danger, the group attacked Rajalakshi with lethal weapons. She died on the spot. Later, they turned to Perumal and attacked him with weapons killing him on the spot.

Police said Paralogaraja had confessed to the crime and gave them the names of the other accused, including Antony Raj, who is accused of murdering his father.

Police registered a case and launched hunt for Antony Raj and the other accused. They recovered the weapons the culprits had used to commit the crime.

