A serial biter, a wannabe cause stir in Tiruchy

TIRUCHY: Two men in Tiruchy — one on a biting spree at a railway platform and the other running on the airport runway ‘to board a Singapore flight’ without any papers — created a flutter on Tuesday morning, giving tense moments to security personnel, who later declared both of them as ‘mentally ill’.   At the Junction Railway station, the 35-year-old man sauntered towards an old woman making a strange noise and bowed before her. Before she could realise what was happening, the man dug his teeth into one of her legs. Even as the woman screamed, he bit another man, causing a commotion on the platform that saw people running helter skelter in panic with the predator in hot pursuit. Between 9 and 10 am, Holy John — that was the name by which he identified himself — had a bite of at least 10 human legs before the police and ambulance arrived.   When sub-inspector of police, Rajkumar, confronted the serial biter and asked him what he wanted, he said, ‘your leg’ and gnawed his hand as Rajkumar tried to seize him. Subsequently, the ambulance driver overpowered him. Police later said that Holy John, a native of Kaliakkavilai in Kanyakumari district, was receiving  treatment for mental illness in Chennai and had escaped from the facility. They did not know how he reached Tiruchy.About two hours later, when passengers were boarding an AirAsia flight to Singapore, they spotted a man in jeans and tee-shirt rushing towards the  plane from another direction. On being questioned, the 25-year-old man said he wanted to go to Singapore, but had no ticket or passport on him. Apart from saying that his name was Arunachalam, he gave no clear answers for the police queries. He is suspected to have jumped over a low wall on the perimeter of the airport.