Madurai Bench of Madras HC acquits six in former panchayat president murder case

Of the remaining 10 persons, four were acquitted and six persons, namely, A Ilaiyaraja, J Johnson Kumar, P Nattamai alias Natarajan, T Kanagaraj, A Hari Krishnan and G Senthil, were convicted in 2023.

Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court.  File Photo | Express

MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court recently acquitted six persons who were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of murdering a former panchayat president in Madakudi panchayat in Tiruchy in 2015.

A bench of justices N Anand Venkatesh and P Dhanabal passed the order on a batch of appeals filed by the six persons challenging the conviction and sentence imposed on them by the IInd Additional Sessions Judge of Tiruchy on September 25, 2023.

According to the prosecution, the deceased C Sekar, who was an advocate and former president of Madakudi panchayat, was hacked to death by an armed gang when he was returning from his office at Samayapuram Main Road on the evening of December 16, 2015.

Based on a complaint lodged by his wife, the Samayapuram police registered a case and filed a final report against 13 suspects in 2017. While one of them died during the pendency of trial, the case against two more accused was split up. Of the remaining 10 persons, four were acquitted and six persons, namely, A Ilaiyaraja, J Johnson Kumar, P Nattamai alias Natarajan, T Kanagaraj, A Hari Krishnan and G Senthil, were convicted in 2023.

Hearing the appeals filed against the said judgement, the bench noted that the statement of the deceased's wife, who is claimed to be an eyewitness to the incident, was recorded on December 19, 2015 but reached the court below only on August 24, 2016 and the prosecution has not given any explanation for the said delay.

Also, the eyewitness did not know any of the accused before, but without any test identification parade, she is said to have identified the accused directly during the trial seven years after the incident, the judges noted and questioned the reliability of the same.

Further referring to corrections made on the complaint copy regarding the time of incident, the judges opined that the prosecution might have tried to develop a case at a later stage. Holding that the prosecution failed to prove the case beyond reasonable doubts, the judges acquitted the six persons from the case.