How to get away with murder
A conviction rate of just about 50 per cent, including in grievous crimes like murder, points to how police apathy, ‘standard’ charge sheets, and ‘perfunctory or designedly defective investigations’ (in the words of the Supreme Court) stymie justice delivery in Tamil Nadu.
Inot be a hyperbole to T WOULD state that a police charge sheet can be a playbook for ‘getting away with murder’. The conviction rate of just about 50 per cent including in grievous crimes like murder because of ‘perfunctory or designedly defective investigations’ (in the words of the Supreme Court) by the police means many murderers are roaming free in the society or innocent persons get arrested and are made to undergo trial. In either case, the grief of the victims’ families remains unaddressed.
Criminal lawyers point out the practice of ‘standard charge sheets’ in the police system, wherein either deliberately or by mechanical work, charge sheets are abounded with loopholes, resulting in embarrassment for police. But, what is an embarrassment for police is lethal for society.
Take, for instance, the case of a TCS employee who stabbed his female colleague to death in Perungudi in April 2014, for allegedly turning down his proposal. The accused in this case, K Venkatachalapathy was arrested for murder in 2008, in which he stabbed an 18-year-old college student to death, by barging into her house in Erode, according to news reports at that time. He was acquitted in the case and six years later, he committed another murder.
In the criminal justice system, the police are the kingpins, the Madras High Court had observed, noting that not even the court would interfere with the investigation and that victims of crime are dependent on the investigation agency for justice. “A fair justice can be done, only on the materials placed before the court by the investigating agency,” the court had remarked in a judgment in 2020, where it came down hard on lazily done police investigations.
In the past two months, the Mahila court in Chennai had given the final verdict in seven murder cases, four of which have ended in acquittal. The conviction in all three cases involved the husbands of the deceased. It is unlikely that the city police would take up these cases for investigation again. But the victims — a four-year-old orphan, who was murdered two months into her adoption, and a young widow who left behind her two children — are robbed of justice. DT Next presents what transpired in the trial, which led to the acquittals.