A knitwear exporter, a relative of senior Congress leader and former Union finance minister P Chidambaram, was abducted and killed by a three-member gang, the police said on Wednesday.

Coimbatore: A knitwear exporter, a relative of senior Congress leader and former Union finance minister P Chidambaram, was abducted and killed by a three-member gang, the police said on Wednesday.

The three men were arrested late on Tuesday night from a town near Vellore, they said.

The family of C Shivamurthy, 47, had lodged a missing person complaint on 25 June in neighbouring Tirupur after he failed to return home from the office.

On receiving an alert from their counterparts in that town, the police here traced his car to an area near Vellore through the GPRS equipment fitted in the vehicle around midnight.

A police patrol on the National Highway then located the car at Vengili and arrested the three men.

On being questioned, the trio said they abducted Shivamurthy from Tirupur, took him to Mettupalayam near Coimbatore on Monday last and killed him.

Later, they dumped his body in a lake near Hosur, the police said.

The trio was identified as Gouthaman, Vimal and Manibharathi of Coimbatore.

Based on their confession, another person was arrested at Karamadai, about 35 kilometres from Coimbatore on Wednesday morning.

Shivamurthy is the son-in-law of Chidambaram's sister-in-law, the police said, adding they were ascertaining the exact reason for the murder.