CHENNAI: The Madras High Court on Friday ordered the immediate release of former DMK MLA M Rajkumar and his aide K Jaishankar accused in the murder and rape of a 15-year-old in 2012. The court set aside a 2018 order of the Special Court for MPs/ MLAs that had convicted the former legislator and given him 10 years rigorous imprisonment.
Justice N Sathish Kumar of the Madras High Court hearing the bail plea in his order acquitted both the accused of all the charges levelled against them and ordered them to be set at liberty forthwith unless their custody is required in any other cases.
It may be recalled that, on December 28, 2018, the special court trying MPs and MLAs here sentenced the former DMK MLA and his accomplice in the case that occurred in 2012 in Perambalur. The case was transferred in 2012 to the CBCID, which carried out the investigation based on which the MLA was charged under four sections of the Indian Penal Code.
The duo was charged with kidnapping, sexually assaulting and kidnapping the minor girl who died on July 6, 2012.
The case hit the headlines in June 2012 when the 15-year-old girl from Kerala, working as a domestic maid in Rajkumar's house at Perambalur district, was hospitalised in suspicious circumstances and her parents were told that she was down with a fever. After a few days, she died in a private hospital in Theni district, where her family shifted her.
The parents during her funeral rites in their native Peermedu village in Idukki district noticed injuries on her body based on which a postmortem was ordered, which found that she was sexually abused.