CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government has filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking a review of the 8 October order by a three-judge bench that acquitted Dashwanth, who had been convicted and was facing the death penalty for the brutal murder of a seven-year-old girl.
The review petition, along with an interlocutory petition to have the case heard in open court, was filed by the government earlier this month.
The same three-judge bench of Justice Vikram Nath, Justice Sanjay Karol, and Justice Sandeep Mehta, which delivered the October verdict, will examine the petitions in an in-chamber proceeding on Wednesday to decide whether to admit them.
The interlocutory petition was filed since the review pleas are otherwise heard only in chambers.
The bench, in its verdict, had criticised the prosecution for “miserably” failing to prove the key circumstantial evidence on which the case rested, leaving the court with no option but to acquit the appellant despite the heinous nature of the crime.
The girl, who went missing on 5 February 2017 while playing outside her home in Madhanandhapuram, was found dead three days later, her body in a burnt state.
Police arrested Dashwanth for allegedly raping and murdering the child. A sessions court in Chengalpattu convicted him and awarded him a death sentence in February 2018, which was subsequently upheld by the Madras High Court in July that year.
Dashwanth was acquitted by the trial court in the murder case of his mother, citing gross failure on the part of prosecution. Her mother was killed when Dashwanth was on bail before his conviction in the girl’s murder.