CHENNAI: When C Charles appeared before a trial court late last year as the investigation officer (IO) in the 2017 murder of S Dashwanth’s mother S Sarala, he admitted he had a “good experience” in investigation as he had handled about 25 “grave cases”.
Yet, in this “grave” murder where Dashwanth was the sole accused, the trial court found the investigation, he headed as the then inspector of Kundrathur police station and the prosecution in general, failed “miserably” to prove the allegation due to its glaring omissions, right from the failure to have a forensic team inspect the scene of crime.
On April 29 this year, J Mavis Deepika Sundaravadhana, the then principal district and sessions judge of Chengalpattu, acquitted Dashwanth – a death row convict at that time in the 2017 rape and murder of the seven-year-old girl.
The trial court’s verdict echoed the apex court’s October 8 scathing indictment of the investigation in both crimes despite their gravity.
While circumstances surrounding Sarala’s murder on December 2, 2017 were relatively less complex than the seven-year-old’s murder, the lapses in the investigation were more blatant than those highlighted by the apex court in the latter case.
The prosecution’s case was that Dashwanth, arrested for the girl’s murder in February 2017 and jailed until his bail in September, had developed “ill-habits” through the ‘friendship’ he developed while in jail, and needed money.
After seeing his uncle Moorthy handing over Rs 10,000 to his mother the day before, Dashwanth asked her to give him the money, on December 2. When she refused, he killed her by smashing her head with a hammer “indiscriminately and repeatedly” and fled on her bike with the cash and jewellery. His father A Sekar, unable to reach his wife through phone, asked Sarala’s sister Devika to check on her. Devika and her son found the door locked, broke it open, and found Sarala dead in a pool of blood.
Meanwhile, Dashwanth tried selling the jewellery through David, a prison acquaintance, went to Bengaluru and Mumbai, from where he was arrested and brought to Chennai on December 10.
Sekar, the de facto complainant, turned hostile during the trial, giving Dashwanth an alibi that he was at his grandfather’s house that day. Devika’s statements also contained contradictions.
While these were major setbacks, the prosecution also failed in almost every other aspect of proving the case through circumstantial evidence, including the ‘last seen theory’ to show Dashwanth was with his mother before her death.
Here is a comprehensive but not exhaustive list of blatant lapses:
Dashwanth’s grandfather, uncle Moorthy, a doctor who first confirmed Sarala’s death, and a neighbour questioned that day by the police were neither cited nor examined as witnesses; no evidence provided to establish that Moorthy gave Rs 10,000 to Sarala – the key event that led to the murder, according to the police.
Fingerprint expert, forensic photographer and sniffer dog never visited the crime scene; no record was presented to show that the accused travelled to Bengaluru, or to show he was arrested from Mumbai; the seizure of hammer used in the murder from near a petrol bunk nine days later with no photographic proof of the seizure from the spot was “highly unbelievable”.
Moreover, the court concluded that one Muthu, who was the prosecution witness (PW) to prove that Dashwanth was arrested from Mumbai, was a “tutored”, “stock witness”: No evidence showed to establish David and Manikandan, other PWs, helped in selling the jewellery besides their statements that had umpteen contradictions. Both in fact admitted that police had previously foisted theft cases against them.
Consequently, the trial court acquitted Dashwanth, citing the principle laid out consistently by the Supreme Court that in cases resting solely on circumstantial evidence, “each link in the chain should be proven beyond reasonable doubt”. A government prosecutor told TNIE they decided not to appeal in the Madras High Court as securing conviction seemed “impossible” with the shoddy investigation and the evidence.
Lapses blatant
While circumstances surrounding Sarala’s murder on December 2, 2017 were relatively less complex than the seven-year-old’s murder, the lapses in the investigation were more blatant. The prosecution’s case was that Dashwanth, arrested for the girl’s murder and jailed until his bail in September, had developed “ill-habits” via the ‘friendship’ he developed in jail
(With inputs from Rajalakshmi Sampath)