The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Acharya's plea: orders posted to March 8

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Saturday, Mar 04, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Acharya's plea: orders posted to March 8

Staff Reporter

"Prima facie a case has been made out against accused"

PONDICHERRY : Orders on the discharge petitions filed by the junior Acharya Vijayendra Saraswathi and his brother M. K. Raghu in the "Kanchi Sankararaman murder case" have been posted to March 8.

Principal Sessions Judge M. Chinnapandi on Friday fixed the date for passing orders on the petitions on conclusion of arguments.

Opposing both the discharge petitions, Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) T. Balasundaram submitted in his opening arguments that prima facie a case had been made out against the accused. Ample evidence was available to frame charges.

Categorising the accused as conspirators, actual assailants, fake assailants and abettors, Mr. Balasundaram said all the conspirators need not necessarily take part in all the events related to the crime. He pointed out that the Chinglepet Court had not found grounds to discharge any of the accused.

K.S. Dinakaran, defence counsel, said the prosecution should have narrated at least a substance of what evidence they had.

Lakshmana Reddiar, junior Acharya's counsel, said there were only oblique references to his client in the evidence. On the day Vijayendra Saraswathi was arrested, namely January 10, 2005, when investigation in the case had come to an end, the details of the dates and time of conspiracy and the names of conspirators were not furnished in the arrest memo.

He pointed out that while the earlier two statements of Kannan, the police head constable did not have any reference to the junior Acharya; his statement on the date of the Acharya's arrest contained a reference.

Similarly, there were contradictions in the statements of two other witnesses, T. A Kannan and Tambaram Babu, and the prosecution were relying on the statements of these three witnesses, he added.

Raghu's counsel Parthasarathy said the court must consider the evidence of other witnesses as well and not just the approver Ravi Subramaniam.

He said there were contradictions in the two statements of Ravi Subramaniam that were recorded in a span of three days.

Winding up the arguments the SPP said there were reasonable suspicions to frame charges and added that in the initial stage of the case critical analysis of evidence was not necessary and sought dismissal of the discharge petitions.

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