CHENNAI: Eight years after RTI activist J Parasmal (59) was brutally murdered in Vepery, just 1.5 km away from the Chennai police commissioner’s office, a city trial court acquitted all 12 accused in the case, citing Periamet police’s inability to prove the case beyond doubt.
The police’s case was that the main accused, a realtor Ramesh Kumar Modi, had paid Rs 5 lakh to henchmen to murder Parasmal, aggrieved by his RTI activism which exposed violations in his buildings leading to action by Greater Chennai Corporation and Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA). Around 10 am on June 7, 2016, three men in an auto and four others on two bikes had cornered Parasmal on Bakers Street and hacked him to death.
Parasmal was set to attend a hearing of the Tamil Nadu State Information Commission (TNSIC) the following day and obtain documents which would have exposed Ramesh, said the prosecution. Apart from Ramesh, police had also arrested D Sadasivam, N Jayapal, K Murali, Rajan, Kumar, Ameer Hamza, Vinodhkumar, Appu, ‘Mana’ Rajendran, ‘Ramu’ Janakiraman and Mohammed Ali in the case.
‘Police failed to table documents as proof’
Delivering the verdict in the last week of July, the 17th Additional Sessions judge R Thothiramary pointed out that police had failed to present evidence to prove Ramesh’s enmity with Parasmal. No documents were tabled to back their claims that Parasmal’s RTIs had exposed violations in buildings owned by Ramesh.
The theory that Parasmal was murdered on the eve of the TNSIC hearing also fell flat as police failed to present necessary papers as evidence. The police even failed to prove Ramesh’s link with the realty firm he was supposedly an owner of.
The judge further added that while taking a statement from Parasmal’s aide produced as a prosecution witness, police did not ask any questions about any complaint filed by Parasmal against Modi.
Another important goof-up by the police was their failure to conduct an identification parade of the accused in front of eyewitnesses, which the judge said was damaging to the prosecution’s case.
Though the cops produced CCTV footage from some nearby commercial establishments to pin the accused, they had failed to certify it as per the format of the Evidence Act, which created doubt in the prosecution’s case. Also, police said that the accused had shopped in Puducherry after the murder, but they did not produce any CCTV footage to back the claim, the judge said.
Of the 39 prosecution witnesses, 28 turned hostile and did not support the police’s theory in the court, the judge pointed out. These reasons caused enough doubt in the trial to give the benefit to the accused, the judge said, acquitting all 12.
A source close to Parasmal told TNIE that all RTI and TNSIC documents were handed over to the police by the family. “He was carrying those documents with him when he was murdered,” the source said.