2015 Dalit murder case: HC upholds life term awarded to 8 convicts
The high court, however, reduced the life sentences of two other convicts on the grounds that they were not present at the crime scene, and were accused of assisting and shielding the prime accused.
ByDivya Chandrababu, Chennai
The Madras high court on Friday upheld the conviction and life sentence awarded to eight people in connection with the 2015 murder of a Dalit student in Tamil Nadu on suspicion that he was in a relationship with an upper caste woman.
The high court, however, reduced the life sentences of two other convicts on the grounds that they were not present at the crime scene, and were accused of assisting and shielding the prime accused.
“They (convicts) were all under the influence of a demon called as caste,” a division bench comprising justices Anand Venkatesh and M S Ramesh said as it upheld the conviction of the eight convicts by a special court last year. “The facts of the present case fall under the category of ‘honour killing’,” the bench added.
The decapitated body of V Gokulraj was found near a railway track in the state’s Namakkal district on June 23, 2015. Police investigation revealed that the 21-year-old was murdered as he was seen at a temple, talking to a woman who belonged to the Gounder community.
Seventeen people were named as accused in the case. In March last year, a special court in Madurai convicted and awarded life imprisonment to 10 people, including S Yuvaraj, then president of caste outfit Dheeran Chinnamalai Peravai in Namakkal and main accused, on the basis of “circumstantial evidence”.
Five accused were acquitted due to lack of evidence. While one person died, another convict is still undergoing trial at a Namakkal court.
Last year, the 10 convicts challenged their sentencing in the high court. At the same time, Gokulraj’s mother, V Chitra, moved the high court, seeking capital punishment for the accused. The state, meanwhile, appealed against the two acquittals.
Dismissing the appeals of the convicts, the high court bench on Friday said: “We remained conscious of the fact that moral conviction has no place in criminal jurisprudence.”
The bench, however, reduced the life imprisonment of two convicts – M Prabhu and P Giridhar – to five years. It noted that since the two men were charged for aiding and shielding the prime accused, and were not present at the scene of crime, they cannot be considered to be part of the “conspiracy”.
“On balancing between the mitigating and aggravating circumstances, the Trial Court thought it fit to impose the sentence of imprisonment for the rest of the life of the accused persons without entitlement for remission, as the appropriate sentence to be imposed against the accused persons,” the bench said.
The bench, which was hearing the case since November 15, dismissed the appeals of the state and the deceased’s mother.
“I thank the judges for the punishment given to the accused. We had struggled to bring the case back on track,” Gokulraj’s mother, V Chithra, said.
There was no immediate reaction from the state government at the time of filing this report.
Police said that on June 23, Gokulraj was blindfolded and abducted from the temple by Yuvaraj’s aides after he was spotted talking to the woman belonging to the Gounder community. His decapitated body was found on the railway tracks on the following day.
A post mortem report said it was a case of culpable homicide.
The trial in the case began in 2018. In 2019, the high court shifted the trial to a special court in Madurai which deals with cases booked under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989.
Besides Yuvaraj, the remaining convicts are his brother Thangadurai, Arun, Kumar, Sankar, Arul Vasantham, Selvakumar, Sathishkumar, Raghu alias Sridhar and Ranjith.
Those acquitted were Shankar, Arul Senthil, Selvakumar, Thangadurai and Suresh. The identity of the lone undertrial could not be immediately ascertained.
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Courtesy : HT
Note: This news piece was originally published in thindustantimes.com and used purely for non-profit/non-commercial purposes exclusively for Human Rights