Kerala: Tribal killed 5 years ago, will now be punished
April 4, 2023 Author Dalit Times
Kerala : SC/ST Mannarkkad Special Court has found 14 accused guilty and acquitted 2 in the Madhu murder case. The court found the convicts guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder under section 304(2) of the IPC. The court will announce the sentence on Wednesday. The names of the accused are Hussain, Maraikar, Shamsuddin, Radhakrishnan, Abubakar, Siddiqui, Ubaid, Najeeb, Jajumon, Munir Sajeev, Satish, Harish and Biju. While other accused in the case Anish and Abdul Karim have been acquitted by the court.
What was the matter?
In fact, on February 22, 2018, a group of locals caught and thrashed Madhu, a tribal from Palakkad, accusing her of stealing food items from a grocery store. After this he was handed over to the police. But by then his condition had worsened. After which Madhu died while being taken to the hospital.
According to the postmortem report, Madhu died due to fractures on her head and ribs and internal bleeding. Two days later, following an uproar over the incident, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) filed a 3,000-page charge sheet and named a total of 16 people as accused in the case. The accused were charged under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. All the accused were granted bail by the High Court in May 2018 with stringent conditions.
The bail of the accused was canceled only after three months
Three months later, a special court in Mannarkkad to try offenses under the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act canceled the bail of 12 accused, accepting the prosecution’s argument that, under their influence, the trial would be delayed. During this many witnesses had turned hostile.
The special court said that on evaluation of all the material brought before it by the prosecution, it came to the conclusion that the accused had influenced the witnesses. As per reports, a Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) was appointed for the case on the request of Madhu’s mother, however he was not ready to appear citing several inconveniences.
Hearing started on 28 April 2022
Later VT Raghunath was appointed as SPP and when the matter came up for hearing in the Mannarkkad special court on January 25, 2022, he also did not appear. Later, advocate Rajesh M Menon took over as SPP after the victim’s family demanded a change in the prosecutor.
The hearing of the case, which started on 28 April 2022, was completed on 10 March 2023. There were 127 prosecution witnesses in the case. 100 witnesses who were heard during the trial.
