MADURAI: The Madras high court has set aside the conviction and sentence awarded by the trial court in two cases of offences committed by the same gang on the same day — one a murder and the other an assault — and remitted them back to the trial court for joint trial. In one case, a sub-inspector of police (SI) was murdered and in the other a police head constable was assaulted.
The incident happened in Ramanathapuram district on April 28, 2006. Around 7.30pm when SI Subramanian of Abiramam police station was patrolling near Nandiseri, an eight-member gang murdered him using billhooks and stole his gold ring, mobile phone and two-wheeler. A few minutes later, the gang assaulted head constable Bose who was travelling on his two-wheeler and stole valuables from him. An injured Bose escaped and reported the incident to the police station. Abiramam police registered two separate cases against the accused.
In 2020, the additional district sessions court in Paramakudi convicted and sentenced Sappani, Muthuramalingam, Moorthy, Ravi Shanmugam and Gnanavelpandian to life imprisonment for offence under IPC section 302 for the murder of the SI. In the assault case, the same court convicted and sentenced five accused to seven years rigorous imprisonment. In both the cases the court had acquitted a man while two accused died during the pendency of the trial.
Murugesan, Muthuramalingam and Gnanavelpandian filed criminal appeals challenging the conviction and sentence imposed by the trial court in both the cases. Since Ravi and Moorthy had undergone the seven-year sentence, they had filed criminal appeals only challenging the conviction and life term sentence imposed by the trial court.
Hearing the appeals, a division bench of Justices R Subramanian and N Sathish Kumar observed that Section 223(d) of Cr PC empowers or provides for conduct of joint trials in case of persons accused of different offences committed in the course of the same transaction. The judges said most of the evidence is common in both the cases and the witnesses examined are also the same. However, since the assault resulted in the death of the SI while the head constable escaped with injuries, the accused were being charged for different offences.
The judges observed that the conduct of separate trials had resulted in documents being interchanged which affected the trial in both the cases. The sessions court could have done well to at least conduct a joint trial. Hence, the judges set aside the trial court judgments and remitted back both the sessions cases to the additional district sessions court to conduct a joint trial within three months.
