MADURAI: Citing lacunae in investigation, the Madurai Bench of the Madras HC recently directed the Ramanathapuram SP to reopen the Kadaladi government school laptops missing case and entrust the investigation to a ‘sincere’ police officer.
Nearly 20 laptops meant to be distributed to Class XII students of the government higher secondary school in Kadaladi went missing in November 2015. But the Kadaladi police, who registered a case, closed the case as ‘undetected’ in November 2016.
After knowing about the closure of the case through an RTI report in 2019, a drawing teacher from the school, D Viswanathan, filed a petition before the HC seeking reinvestigation. The petition was allowed by the court on January 21, 2019. However, Viswanathan claimed due to the petition, a false case has been foisted against him, at the instigation of the culprit behind the laptop theft. Owing to the criminal charges, he was also suspended from service.
Hearing Viswanathan’s plea challenging his suspension order, Justice B Pugalendhi sought a status report on the laptop theft case and found that the case has been once again closed as undetected.