A public interest writ petition has been filed in the Madras High Court for a direction to the TN government to transfer the investigation into the serial murders of Hindu Munnani and BJP functionaries in the last two years to the National Investigating Agency (NIA).
The first bench of Chief Justice RK Agrawal and Justice M Sathyanarayanan, before which the PIL from S Subramanian Balaji of Mylapore came up for hearing on Thursday, adjourned the matter by a day and ordered posting of the case before some other bench.
The petitioner contended that the investigation into the attempt to murder BJP senior leader LK Advani during his visit to Madurai, and into the murder of Murugan of Paramakkudi, Suresh Kumar of Madurai, Dr Arvind Reddy and Vellaiapan of Vellore and auditor Ramesh of Salem was conducted ‘shabbily’ by the local police.
The local police had watered down the seriousness of the cases by claiming that the murders were due to real estate disputes or personal vendetta. Shielding the fact that the murders were caused by terrorists belonging to various outfits due to religious fundamentalism, they had arrested innocent persons. The authorities could not rule out the involvement of these terrorists, their associates or operatives in other cases of terror in other cities and also their plans. Unless the probe was transferred to the NIA or the CBI, the same would seriously erode into the national morale and raise a feeling of a collective weakness, the petitioner said. Advocate M Duraiselvan of Chepauk has filed another writ petition praying for a direction to the government to pay suitable compensation to the families of the victims.