The defence counsels resumed their arguments before the Principal District and Sessions Judge C S Murugan in the Sankararaman murder case here on Monday.
Senior Madras High Court advocate M Venkataraman appeared for Kanchi Sankaracharya Jayendra Saraswathi, the prime accused in the case, and presented his arguments before the judge. Later, Madras HC lawyer K M Subramanian presented his arguments for the 12 accused, number 13 to 24 (Meenakshi Sundaram, R P Palani, Kuruvi Ravi, Arumugham, Dil Pandian, Satheesh, Devaraj, Arul, Arumugham, Sekhar, Silvester Stalin and Senthil Kumar) in the case. Judge C S Murugan fixed November 15 as the date for continuing the defence arguments for Sundaresa Iyer (A 3) and eight others accused no 5 to 12.
Twenty of the 24 accused were present in the court on Monday. However, the acharyas were not present. It may be recalled that the defence arguments for Vijayendra Saraswathi, accused number 2, and Raghu (A 4) were already completed. Further arguments in the case were delayed due to petitions filed by Padma, wife of slain Sankararaman, seeking police protection and “re-examination of herself and her family members”. In the last week of October, Padma had withdrawn the petitions citing ill health
Special public prosecutor N Devadoss had completed prosecution arguments in April. Sankararaman, manager of Varadarajaperumal temple in Kancheepuram, was murdered on temple premises on Sept 3, 2004.
Out of the 189 witnesses examined during the trial between 2010 and 2011, 83 had turned hostile.