CHENNAI: A division bench of Madras High Court bemoaned the failure of the higher judiciary in rendering timely justice to those affected in the Venkatesa Pannaiyar encounter case, who had approached it 13 years ago for appropriate relief.
“It is the best thing to blame ourselves when people cannot get on well with us,” the bench of Justices S Nagamuthu and Anitha Sumanth quoted Mahatma Gandhi adding, “Yes, we accept the blame.” Expressing its inability to order a CBI inquiry into the encounter belatedly as demanded by the petitioners, the bench observed “at this length of time, we could only express our regret.” “However, we assure the people of this country that this will not get repeated.
Having said so, we cannot omit to grant the minimum possible relief to the petitioners. Having spent their valuable time and money, the petitioners cannot go without even getting the cost from the State,” the judges said and directed the Tamil Nadu government to pay within six months `25,000 each to the petitioners -- V Radhika Selvi, wife of Venkatesa Pannaiyar and former Union Minister of State for Home in the Manmohan Singh government and Balamurali alias Pepsi Murali, another accused in the case.
In their writ petitions filed in 2004 and 2005, they both demanded transfer of the investigation into the encounter death of Pannaiyar to the CBI.
Pannaiyar was shot dead at an apartment in Numgambakkam in Chennai at 4.30 am on September 26, 2003, by SS Krishnamoorthy, Deputy Commissioner of Police. Another interesting aspect of the case is that the report of Justice A Raman, the one man commission of inquiry appointed to probe the encounter, was being kept in cold storage for years. As the encounter had raised a lot of hue and cry, the government had ordered the probe by Justice Raman in October, 2003 and he had submitted his report the next year. Following filing of the petitions and arguments that the inquiry by Justice Raman was only an eye-wash, the court had granted a stay and the report was not made public. The stay was vacated only on February 13 last, thanks to Chief Justice SK Kaul, who wanted to clear all pending criminal cases and gave resurrection to the cases.
The government is expected to place the report in the ensuing Assembly session and take necessary action thereafter. Coming back to the case, the bench in its 36-page order observed that it was a farce and mockery in allowing Inspector of Nungambakkam police station, a subordinate to DCP Krishnamoorthy, who shot dead Pannaiyar, to go ahead with the investigation into the encounter.
The investigation should have been entrusted to any other agency like CBI or at least to the CB-CID to unearth the truth. Unfortunately, it was not done, the bench deplored.
If the investigation was transferred to CBI at this length of time and the probe is commenced afresh, it would offend fair and speedy investigation guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. The Judges observed that these petitions ought to have been given preference and disposed of within a reasonable time as soon as they were entertained.
Somehow, they missed the attention of the court for 13 long years. “Since this court had omitted inadvertently to give preference to these writ petitions... there occurred failure of justice to the petitioners,” the bench admitted, but dismissed the petitions with a directive to pay `25,000 towards costs to each of the petitioners.