MADURAI: Castigating the state government for not publishing the Government Order (GO) allowing the premature release of the Melavalavu case life convicts in the gazette, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court directed that a copy of the release order be produced in the court on Tuesday.
Hearing a Public Interest Litigation filed by an advocate P Rathinam, who challenged the release of the 13 life convicts involved in the murder of the president of Melavalavu panchayat and five others belonging to the dalit community, a bench comprising Justices S Vaidyanathan and N Anand Venkatesh asked, "When six Scheduled Caste people were butchered by the convicts and their punishment had been confirmed by the Supreme Court, what is the big hurry in releasing them?"
Taking on the state government, the judges said, "What will people of the lower strata think about the state? Even in the Dharmapuri bus burning incident, you (state government) did the same."
Irked over the submission that the convicts were released immediately after the GO was passed, the judges fumed, "Are they Mahatmas? Are they that important to society for the government to be so keen on their release?"
In his petition, the petitioner Rathinam, who argued as a party in person, noted that two Public Interest Litigations, filed earlier, had prayed to declare that convicts tried under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 are ineligible for premature release.
While the court dismissed those petitions, it issued a direction to the petitioners to make a representation to the government on the issue and said the government shall decide and pass appropriate orders on the representation considering the interest of public and social order within six months.
The petitioner contended that despite this, the state had not passed any orders on those representations so far and instead passed a GO to release the Melavalavu life convicts.
The Melavalavu murder case was the first in the state in which the accused were tried and convicted under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
The convictions came after the president of Melavalavu panchayat Murugesan and five others including the vice president of the panchayat Mookan belonging to the dalit community were brutally murdered in broad daylight on June 30, 1997. Murugesan was beheaded and his head dropped inside a well half a kilometre away from the murder scene.
In 2008, three convicts who were sentenced to seven years in jail were released by the then DMK government. Another died while serving his sentence in prison.
The life convicts involved in the case U Ponnaiah, K Manikandan, A Andichamy, V Manoharan, N Renganathan, N Sakkaramoorthy, M Alagu, K Rajendran, P Sekar, A Chokkanathan, P Selvam, P Chinnaodungan and S Ramar were released from the Madurai Central Prison during the MGR birth centenary celebrations.