Double murder: Madras high court sets aside lower court order, acquits four

MADURAI: Setting aside the order of a lower court, the Madras high court acquitted four people in a double murder case, citing that motive without proof is not enough to convict the accused.
The prosecution had contended that Rajendran, Muthallagu, Nadarajan and Murthy alias Ponniyamorthy had murdered E Durairaj’s sons owing to previous enmity as the latter had informed revenue officials about their illegal sand mining activity.There was also a civil dispute between them with regard to a temple festival.
The prosecution had alleged that Durairaj’s sons were murdered by the four on October 4, 2013 when they went to a location on receiving information about illegal sand mining. The Mathur police station in Pudukkottai district had investigated the case. The Pudukkottai additional district and sessions court had sentenced the four to life imprisonment on December 12, 2017. The accused moved the Madurai bench in 2018 challenging the order.
A division bench of Justice S Vaidyanathan and Justice N Anand Venkatesh observed that motive is important as the prosecution tried to prove the case through circumstantial evidence.
The judges observed that the prosecution relied on one of the most important circumstance, a phone call received by a witness from Murthy giving information on sand mining, based on which the deceased persons went to the spot. The judges cited that if there was a phone call, the same could have been easily proved from the call details and that has not been done in this case.
“There are wide gaps in every link in the chain of circumstances. The circumstances relied upon by the prosecution does not lead to the hypothesis that it is these accused who had committed the murder. Unfortunately, howsoever strong the suspicion is, the same cannot take the place of proof which is very essential to convict and sentence the accused,” observed the judges.