Udumalpet Sankar murder: HC acquits father-in-law, commutes death penalty of five

Chennai

However, the conviction of the five assailants was modified to that of life sentence from death with a rider of minimum 25 years without any right to remission.

A division bench comprising Justice M Sathyanrayanan and Justice M Nirmal Kumar in an order running to over 300 pages, said “Chinnasamy (A1), is not guilty of conspiracy for the reason that only one link in the chain of circumstances, as to the frequent contact between A8, A6 and A9 with A1 and in turn, his contact with A8 has been proved while other links in the chain of circumstances, have not been proved. However, the bench on reiterating that notwithstanding the acquittal of A1 by the court, A4 to A8 (Jegadeesan, Manikandan, Selvakumar, Kalai Tamilvaanan and Madan alias Michael) have been attributed with fatal overt acts in the attacking PW1 (Kausalya) with lethal weapons and caused the death of Shankar, said “The presence of A4 to A8 in the scene of occurrence and their overt acts have been amply proved by the prosecution beyond any reasonable doubt.” The bench in its order also held that from the testimonies of witnesses, it is rather surprising to note that despite the receipt of the information as to the attack upon PW1 and Shankar, the police personnel did not act swiftly and showed little urgency.