VELLORE: The Principal Sessions Court in Vellore on Monday acquitted a man accused of murder and directed departmental action against a police inspector and a Village Administrative Officer (VAO) for fabricating evidence to secure a wrongful conviction.
Delivering the verdict, Principal Sessions Judge P L Murugan ruled that the prosecution had failed to establish charges of kidnapping and murder against Hayathbasha @ Naikadi Hayathbasha, who had spent several months in judicial custody. The judge noted that the case was built on weak circumstantial evidence and plagued by “serious investigative lapses”.
The case pertained to the death of a man, also named Hayathbasha, whose body was discovered in a coconut grove in Kallur village, Vellore district, in October 2023. Police had alleged that the accused, a friend of the deceased, killed him following repeated quarrels over personal remarks made about the accused’s wife. Investigators claimed the two had consumed alcohol together on the night of October 11 before proceeding to a nearby field, where the accused allegedly bludgeoned the victim to death with an iron rod.
However, the court found the prosecution’s narrative riddled with inconsistencies. There were no eyewitnesses, no motive backed by direct evidence, and no forensic link to the accused. The claim that the deceased had called the accused before the incident was unsupported by call detail records—an omission the court described as “a fatal flaw in the investigation”.
In a stinging rebuke, the court held that police and the VAO had gone to great lengths to frame the accused by faking key aspects of the investigation. Inspector T Parthasarathy and VAO Raghu had claimed that the accused had voluntarily confessed to the crime, but the judge termed the confession “suspicious and likely scripted”. Based on this so-called confession, the officials said the accused led them to the murder weapon and a blood-stained shirt—recoveries the court ruled were staged. In a further blow to the prosecution, a woman who had merely discovered the body was falsely presented as an eyewitness to the murder.
All of this, the court concluded, pointed to a deliberate and coordinated attempt to fabricate evidence and wrongfully implicate the accused.
The judge directed the Vellore District Collector and the Deputy Inspector General of Police, Vellore Range, to initiate departmental proceedings against the two officials and submit a compliance report within six months.
The court also ordered that the material evidence be destroyed after the appeal period lapses and recommended that compensation be awarded to the widow of the deceased, Sulthana, and their four children. The District Legal Services Authority has been instructed to process the compensation.
The accused was represented by M Kamaraj, Chief Legal Aid Defence Counsel for Vellore district.