AA Edit | TN Custody Deaths: Justice Done
That the Madurai additional district and sessions judge, G. Muthukumaram, classified the case as “rarest of rare” in his judgment and proclaimed that life imprisonment would not be commensurate with the grave crimes committed may have redeemed society’s faith in the judiciary
The common complaint of “justice delayed is justice denied” was not raised in the infamous double murder of a father-and-son duo in June 2020 although it took about six years for the court to send to the gallows the nine police personnel it found guilty of the crime.
That the Madurai additional district and sessions judge, G. Muthukumaram, classified the case as “rarest of rare” in his judgment and proclaimed that life imprisonment would not be commensurate with the grave crimes committed may have redeemed society’s faith in the judiciary.
When, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, information on the brutalities suffered by P. Jayaraj and his son, J. Bennix, humble traders in the sleepy panchayat town of Sathankulam in Thoothukudi district of Tamil Nadu, at the hands of uniformed police personnel inside a police station came to light, it looked as if people had lost their basic humanity. Even though instances of police brutality regularly hit newspaper headlines, Sathankulam represented the depths of savagery, injustice and lawlessness.
When graphic details of the torture of the two men, leading responsible and dignified lives as law-abiding citizens, poured into the public domain, civil society plunged into despair, more so as the perpetrators were men in uniform drawing their salaries from the public exchequer for protecting the people purportedly. Demands to check police brutality were raised even then because the deceased duo’s so-called crime had been just keeping their shop open in violation of pandemic restrictions.
Following the Madurai high court taking cognisance of it due to this public outcry, its verdict in the case that was investigated by the CBI comes as a reassurance to the civil society. Its consistent campaigns against police torture and custodial deaths, including the Sathankulam tragedy, have been at least partially rewarded. The death sentence will likely serve as a deterrent to errant policemen all over the country riding roughshod over convicts and under-trials in the future.