High Court reserves order on petition seeking CBI probe into Ramajeyam murder case

Ramajeyam, a businessman was abducted by an unidentified gang while on morning walk in Tiruchirapalli city on March 29, 2012. His body was found in a bush on the banks of River Cauvery near Thiruvalarcholai on the outskirts of Tiruchirapalli. The murder case was transferred to Crime Branch-CID (CB-CID) police on June 22, 2012.

Since there was no progress made in the investigation, Ramajeyam's wife R.Latha moved the HC Bench in December 2014 seeking CBI probe and accused the police of not showing interest in solving the case.  Since then, the CB-CID had obtained a series of adjournments to crack the murder case.

When the case came up for hearing, senior counsel R.Shanmugasundaram, representing the petitioner, told the court that 'it was not fair on the part of the investigating agency (CB-CID) to seek further time without having shown any substantial progress in the investigation.

The government counsel however alleged that Ramajeyam's family members were not fully cooperating with the investigation. He also said that the CB-CID was genuinely interested in nabbing the real culprits than just closing the case by fixing someone as an accused.

Taking a strong exception to this, the petitioner's counsel argued that the family members of Ramajeyam provided full cooperation to the CB-CID police so far. Though the CBI was also hesitant to take up the case citing shortage of manpower, he said it was up to the court to take the final call.

Hearing the arguments of both sides, Justice A.M.Basheer Ahamed said a perusal of the last two interim status reports by the CB-CID showed that most of the paragraphs from one of those reports had been cut and pasted into the other but for the last line in which the CB-CID had sought for further time to complete the probe.

The Judge deferred his verdict, without mentioning a date on which it would be pronounced, after pointing out that the CB-CID had not been able to crack the case even after five-long-years.