Saturday, February 26, 2011

HC suspects foul play in dalit’s death


Rejects Cops’ Claim That Youth Who Married Upper Caste Girl Died In Mishap
“Are we living in a civilised society? There is definitely a foul play (in the death of a Dalit youth)”.

This was the observation of a division bench of the Madras high court, which disbelieved the police story that the youth, who had married a caste Hindu girl, was fatally knocked down by a speeding vehicle while escaping from police custody.
The bench comprising Justice Elipe Dharma Rao and Justice N Kirubakaran also asked the state police and the superintendent of police of Tirunelveli to take action based on an affidavit filed by M Ranjani, mother of the deceased Vinoth Kumar, and submit a report in court. The bench then adjourned the matter to March 1 for further hearing.

According to Ranjani, Vinoth was arrested by the Puzhal police on August 10, 2010 after he eloped with a minor girl. He came out on bail on August 29. In December 2010, he was picked up by the police, and she approached the Madras high court on January 11, 2011.

On January 14, she received a call from Thisayanvilai police in Tirunelveli district, stating that Vinoth had died while trying to escape from police. Though a postmortem had already been conducted, as per court orders another postmortem was conducted on January 23 here.
On Friday, concurring with the arguments of her counsel P Vijendran, the judges wondered whether it was possible to have a fair probe in the matter at all. They also said the police force was trying only to safeguard the interests of ‘certain persons’, and added: “This (the suspicious death) was not possible without the collusion of the police.” They also wanted the police to arrest a third person named in the new affidavit filed in the court, and felt that even the magistrate who remanded Vinoth Kumar was biased.

On Friday, advocate G Saravana Kumar also filed a sworn affidavit, stating that the evidence he had collected indicated that the youth was murdered by a person hired by the girl’s father. He claimed that deputy superintendent of police-level officials, the girl’s family members and the hired killer were all involved in the death.
Source: The Times of india dated 26.02.2011

No comments:

Post a Comment