MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court on Tuesday sought a status report from Nagercoil Deputy Superintendent of Police on the progress of the investigation into the death of a Dalit youth S Suresh Kumar (27) of Kanniyakumari.
Justice GR Swaminathan gave the direction after Suresh's elder brother Suman Anand moved the High Court alleging that Suresh did not die by suicide but was killed by the family members of a Caste Hindu girl whom Suresh was in love with. Apart from a direction for a re-postmortem examination on Suresh's body, Anand sought compensation and a CBI probe into his death.
On Monday, the judge had directed the Additional Public Prosecutor (APP) to furnish a copy of the autopsy report to the petitioner. When the case was taken up for hearing on Tuesday morning, the APP, in addition to the autopsy report, produced a copy of the CCTV footage collected by the police during their investigation into Suresh's death.
The footage reportedly showed that on the day of his death, the deceased purchased pesticide from an agro farm in Kavalkinaru, which he is said to have consumed later. The judge instructed the APP to show the footage to the petitioner's counsel immediately.
Subsequent to the viewing of the footage, the petitioner's counsel requested for a status report on the investigation conducted so far in the case. But the APP sought two weeks time to file the report citing that the police would be required to collect various details in connection with murder charges levelled against the girl's family.
Accepting both requests, the judge directed the Nagercoil DSP to file a status report on the investigation's progress before the next hearing on November 29. He also directed the Boothapandi police to ensure the safety of the deceased's family members in the meantime.