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Friday, Jan 07, 2005

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Arguments to continue today in Kanchi Acharya case

By J. Venkatesan

NEW DELHI, JAN. 6. F.S. Nariman, senior counsel for the Kanchi Sankaracharya, Sri Jayendra Saraswathi, today asserted that the prosecution had been changing its stand in the High Court and the Supreme Court in regard to vital aspects of the Sankararaman murder case in which the Acharya was arrested on November 11, 2004.

When the matter was taken up today by a three-Judge Bench, comprising the Chief Justice R.C. Lahoti, Justice G.P. Mathur and Justice P.P. Naolekar, he said that earlier the case of the investigating agency was that the money was withdrawn from the ICICI Bank to pay the assailants. But now in the counter-affidavit, it was mentioned that the money was paid out of Rs. 50 lakhs which the Acharya had received as earnest money on April 30, 2004 for sale of some Mutt property. This amount had been deposited by the Manager, Sundaresa Iyer, in the bank on May 7, 2004. There was no evidence to prove that the assailants were paid from this amount nor any recovery had been made from the killers as alleged.

Citing several judgments, including the one by the Privy Council, Mr. Nariman said the sole evidence on the basis of which the Acharya had been charged in the case was the statement of a co-accused, which had no sanctity in law unless backed by other evidence.

"Acharya had a role"

To a question from the Bench to K.T.S. Tulsi, senior counsel for the Tamil Nadu Government, whether there was any evidence apart from the motive arising from the letters written by the deceased, Mr. Tulsi replied that the prosecution had direct evidence linking the Acharya to the conspiracy to kill Sankararaman, Manager of Sri Varadarajaperumal temple in Kancheepuram. He said the Acharya alone had the motive to kill Sankararaman and his participation in the conspiracy had been corroborated by the co-accused.

He said that in a conspiracy case, judicial confession of co-accused was admissible in evidence. Opposing the bail, he said several of the witnesses in the case were employees of the Kanchi Sankara Mutt and if the Acharya was released on bail, these witnesses would not be able to depose against him.

Mr. Tulsi said that if the Tamil Nadu police had failed to arrest the Acharya, he would have fled to a foreign country as detailed flight plans were prepared and even a helicopter was kept ready. Explaining how the evidence was tampered with, he said that by engineering a fake surrender of five persons in the case by making payments, the Acharya had attempted to dislodge and misdirect the investigation.

At this stage of bail, he said, the court need not go deep into the evidence collected by the police so far. On the controversy over the amount of Rs. 50 lakhs, Mr. Tulsi said the accounts of the Mutt appeared to have been tampered with subsequent to the order passed by the apex court on December 17 last and the police were yet to find out the truth. But he denied that the amount was deposited in the bank on May 7, 2004 as claimed by Sundaresa Iyer. Mr. Nariman will make his reply tomorrow.

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