Young widow, kids denied justice
In July 2014, a young widow was murdered in her residence in Velachery, leaving her two children, aged 9 and 4 orphaned. Last month, a city Mahila court acquitted the man arrested for her murder, depriving the children, still minors, of justice.
On July 13, 2014, Velachery police arrested 22-year-old J Penoj and his wife, a minor, for the murder of 27-year-old Saraswathy at her residence in Tamil Nadu Housing Board (TNHB) colony in Velachery, ten days ago.
They were accused of scheming the murder to get away with Saraswathy’s gold jewellery. Saraswathy’s husband died five years before her murder.
According to the prosecution, Saraswathy who worked in a beauty parlour attended a party at a hotel on Race Course Road in Guindy, where her ‘would-be murderers’ saw her wearing more gold ornaments. Penoj’s wife, a tattoo artist, got friendly with Saraswathy and on July 2, 2014, the couple got invited to Saraswathy’s house and strangulated her to death. Saraswathy’s children were with her in the care of her sister, Chitra, as she had to go to work in the evenings.
The next morning, when Chitra came home to collect uniforms for the children, she saw Saraswathi lying on the floor unconscious and moved her to the hospital, where she was declared dead. While the family suspected it to be suicide, an autopsy proved it to be a case of murder after which Velachery police altered the sections and began investigations.
The prosecution case was purely on circumstantial evidence, but the police did not make any effort to prove them, the court noted. Firstly, the police did not produce any witnesses from the hotel where the accused allegedly noticed the deceased wearing enormous gold jewellery to prove that the accused had prior knowledge of the jewellery in her possession.
Further, police contended that the deceased’s sister, Chitra had seen the accused couple when she went to pick up the children on the day of the murder and also relied on the call detail records of the deceased and the juvenile to prove that several calls were made from the juvenile’s phone, the location of which was near the deceased’s home, establishing the last seen theory.
The court, however, considered the defence counsel’s arguments and noted that Chitra did not make any such statement in her initial complaint in the FIR about witnessing the accused near her sister’s residence, which makes her evidence highly doubtful. The prosecution did not produce the call detail records of the accused Penoj and did not provide any explanation why it is not produced either. “A police constable who obtained the CDRs stated that he obtained the CDR for the mobile number of Penoj too. That being so, the suppression of the CDR of the accused raises suspicion about the prosecution case,” sessions judge TH Mohammed Farooq noted.
The court also pointed out that though the TNHB colony, in Velachery, is a not-so-isolated area, no witness from the locality was examined. There was no reliable witness either for the recovery of gold ornaments, supposedly stolen from Saraswathy. “The prosecution has failed to establish all circumstances relied upon them to prove the guilt of the accused,” the court noted and acquitted Penoj.
The sessions judge, however, held that the state has a responsibility to protect its citizens and while it has failed to prove the guilt of the accused beyond a reasonable doubt, it has the duty to rehabilitate the kids of the deceased. The court directed the District Legal Services Authority, Chennai to conduct an enquiry and award adequate compensation to the minor children, out of the fund created under the victim compensation scheme.
This conviction rate may be due to the perfunctory investigation done by some dishonest or unqualified persons in the Department, but, it reflects upon the department as a whole and ultimately, it would affect the morale of sincere and honest officers, on whose ability the Tamil Nadu Police maintained to get 48 per cent conviction rate — Madras High Court