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Case transfer timely: social activists

By R. Ilangovan

SALEM SEPT. 20. Legal experts and social activists have hailed yesterday's Madras High Court ruling transferring the Dharmapuri bus burning case from a Krishnagiri court to the Salem sessions court.

The order, they point out, is ``timely and forthright'' as hopes of getting justice dimmed.

Consolation to a family

The observations by the judge were ``so soothing" that the entire family almost broke down, said the petitioner, N.P. Veerasamy, father of Kokilavani, one of the three girl students of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University who were burnt alive by a mob following the conviction of the Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, in the Pleasant Stay Hotel case.

"The trauma we are undergoing cannot be expressed in words. But the order has strengthened the will of my family to fight for justice against heavy odds. We gratefully welcome the decision of the High Court to transfer the case", he said. The small-time poultry bird seller of Namakkal town, who lost his only daughter in the February 2, 2000 incident, however, pleaded no knowledge of the move and reaction of the parents of the other two victims — Hemalatha and Gayathri — who were consumed in the fire along with Kokilavani.

Melavalavu example

The transfer of a case from one district court to another, to stop intimidation of witnesses, is not something new. In 2000, a two-member Division Bench, accepting a petition from a group of lawyers and human rights activists, transferred the Melavalavu murder case from a Madurai court to Salem sessions.

Seven Dalits including a panchayat president of Melevalavu were hacked to death aboard a running bus on June 30, 1997.

Before the case opened for trial in the Special PCR (Protection of Civil Rights) court in Madurai, P. Rathinam, an activist, and others filed a transfer petition expressing an apprehension that witnesses would be intimidated and tampered with.

Finding it valid, the Bench transferred the case to Salem sessions, which in 2001 sentenced 17 of the accused to life imprisonment.

Mr. Rathinam, talking to The Hindu, said the observations made by the judge against police officials, while transferring the Dharmapuri bus burning case, reactivated the human rights groups to take up it again. "Our attempts to keep the witnesses from intimidation, earlier failed."

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