The Hindu : 'Serious lapses dogged trial'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Sep 21, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu

'Serious lapses dogged trial'

By V.S. Palaniappan

Coimbatore Sept. 20 . Friday's strictures by the Madras High Court have thrown light on "serious lapses" on the part of the prosecution in the trial of the Dharmapuri bus burning case. The mistakes that began by sheer oversight seem to have persisted even during the trial.

The case was transferred to the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the CB-CID within few days of the February 2, 2000 incident. Sources, who were part of the investigation team, said only after strenuous efforts could 31 persons, including the four key accused, be arrested. There was no let-up at this stage and the accused were chargesheeted within 90 days.

The case was bolstered with materials including visual evidence.

First slip

But it witnessed the first slip, they explained, when the local police got a complaint from a village administrative officer, who was not an eyewitness. "They should have obtained a complaint from one of the fellow students of the victims or from the driver of the bus, which was set ablaze, or from one of the staff members of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University as they were eyewitnesses, and it would have created a strong base. There were 19 students in the vicinity, besides those who came in three buses," a police officer noted.

The delay of more than a year in the "committal proceedings" — for transferring the case (after the filing of the charge sheet) from the Dharmapuri judicial magistrate's court I to the first additional sessions court for Dharmapuri at Krishnagiri (court of appropriate jurisdiction) was the second major reason for the debacle. Following the change of Government in 2001, the shifting of officers from the SIT either on transfer or on promotion led to the case losing steam, the sources said.

SIT mistake

Even as the trial progressed, the SIT, being a "foreign agency to Dharmapuri", committed the mistake of not backing the case effectively by "refreshing" the witnesses for deposing before the court.

The prosecution, the sources argued, first let in "insignificant" and "unimportant" witnesses, who could not comprehensively corroborate the incident. All that they could depose was that they saw the bus burning but not who torched it. The agency should have first produced the main eyewitnesses — 19 students who played a crucial role in an "identification parade" held at the Salem central prison.

With the investigating agency and the victims having been away from Dharmapuri, the witnesses were "tampered with", the sources alleged.

Even as the trial was in progress and when some out of the 22 local witnesses turned hostile, the parents of one of the victims moved the High Court, seeking transfer of the case to another court.

The court granted an interim stay of the trial and the time lost in this process also went in favour of the accused.

By the time the trial resumed, most of the students (eyewitnesses), who studied with the victims, had passed out of the university (in 2001 and 2002 and some of them during 2003).

The prosecuting agency was now able to trace only a few of them, pursuing higher studies.

In the absence of such crucial witnesses, it would be a himalayan task for the SIT to do reinvestigation to ensure a logical conclusion to the case.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Southern States

News Update

Stories in this Section

'Serious lapses dogged trial'

Case transfer timely: social activists

Veto Anna varsity land alienation: Durai Murugan

Collective cry against universal oppression

Board hauls up S. Rly for superfluous medical scheme

Police to move SC against bail for Gopal

`Engg. colleges can merge branches for viability, quality'

Whose rule did you mean, Karunanidhi asks Ganesan