Lifer for two in Dindigul doc murder case upheld

A Division Bench comprising Justice S Nagamuthu and Justice M V Muralidharan, said “Without realising as to what are all the evidences which would be useful to prove the charges and what amount of evidence would be sufficient to prove the charges, the investigation has been done in a very careless manner.” 

The bench also held that “Though we feel that the kidnapping for ransom, murder and disposal of the body of the deceased would not have been done only by two persons and few more would have joined, for want of evidence and because of the failure of the investigating agency to collect sufficient evidence, we are unable to convict the others who helped the two men.” 

The deceased, Dr M Bhaskaran, was residing with his wife and son in Dindigul town. Just like his usual visit to the Cosmopolitan Club every morning to play tennis, he had left his house on April 30, 2009. But this time, he was abducted in  a car. The same day, Bhaskaran’s wife received a call demanding Rs 5 crore for his release. 

On May 8, 2009, his body was found in a gunny bag under a bridge across Aliyar River in Aanaimalai. The gold he was wearing was missing. The CB-CID, which probed the case, found the involvement of nine persons including D Karthikeyan and S Sabeer Ahmed, who were arraigned as accused one and two respectively. 

The Principal District and Sessions Judge, Dindigul, on April 10, 2015 convicted eight of the nine accused for life imprisonment and sentenced Manju Bargavi, the sixth accused in the case, to three years’ rigorous imprisonment. Following the sentence, barring Manju, the remaining eight accused challenged their conviction. 

The division bench while confirming the life sentence of Karthikeyan and Sabeer slammed the trial court and the public prosecutor for the shoddy handling of the case on many counts. 

It said “We are unable to understand as to how the trail court was justified in framing charge under section 149 IPC (unlawful assembly) when there were no materials at all in the police report that all the nine accused were together at the time when the murder was committed.”