CHENNAI: The owners of a top freight forwarding company were on Thursday convicted by a Chennai sessions court for brutally murdering their driver in 2010 and dumping the body in Kodaikanal.
Additional sessions judge S Tasneem handed out life imprisonment to Mandaveli resident S Krishnamoorthy, managing director of KSR Freight Forwarders Private Ltd, his son Pratheek Krishnamoorthy who is a director of the firm, their driver R Kannan and hirelings S Vijayakumar, D John and M Senthil.
The six had murdered A Babu alias Hemakumar because of his alleged closeness to Krishnamoorthy’s daughter Deepa Ezhil, who is also a director of the firm.
They had taken him to a house in Chromepet, chopped off his genitalia and stabbed him to death, the judge noted.
Incidentally, case files show that it was Kannan who had gossiped to Pratheek about this alleged closeness between Babu and Deepa, after his misappropriation was highlighted by Babu to their bosses. This has been established by the police as the motive for the murder.
It was Deepa, mother of a then school-going child, who played an important part in the prosecution winning the case, though she turned hostile during trial.
Babu had gone missing on June 30, 2010 and it was Deepa, who two days later, told his parents about her suspicion about the role played by her father and brother.
This set off a chain of events that led to the parents filing a missing complaint.
The Abhiramapuram police arrested Krishnamoorthy and Pratheek and later connected the dots when forest staff recovered Babu’s body in Kodaikanal a week later.
Though Deepa turned hostile during examination in court and said police had threatened her to give a statement against her father and brother, the judge rejected this saying it was not believable.
Another important reason for the conviction was Pratheek’s confession to police, which was given in front of a witness, the judge said.
The judge also recorded evidence collected from NHAI toll plazas and petrol bunks enroute from Chennai to Kodaikanal where two cars that were used by the accused on their way to dump the body filled fuel.
The case was one where prosecution had proven the murder charges based on ‘circumstantial evidence’ rather than presenting ‘eye witness to the alleged offence’.
“There is proper clustering of evidence and documents, the aspect of the six accused in this case, of having jointly conspired and committed the murder was established. The evidence and documents clearly link all the accused and the chain of events does not stand broken, since there is logical explanation in the series of events. The prosecution has answered through evidence and documents, the act and participation of each accused in this case in continuous link,” the judge said.