‘The wheels of justice may grind slow but they grind fine,’ goes a saying. None but P. Manikandan of Melpalanandal village in Tiruvannamalai district may know it better, for the Madras High Court had in 2018 set aside the conviction and death sentence imposed on him for murdering a four-year-old girl child. After five years, he is facing a trial once again for the same offence because of a de novo (fresh) probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
It was on June 13, 2013 that P. Pachiammal, a kindergarten student, went missing from Gandhi International Matriculation School at Mangalam village in Tiruvannamalai. Her parents, Paramasivam and P. Usha, went on a frantic search but in vain. They were told by school administrator Sakthi as well as their nephew Yogesh (name changed), then studying in Class III in the same school, that it was Manikandan who took Pachiammal with him.
However, Manikandan, a friend of Paramasivam, denied having picked up the child from school and joined the family in searching for her. Initially, the Mangalam police booked a child missing case on the basis of the complaint filed by her father. After six days, the villagers found the decomposed body of the child in a well at Reddiar Thoppu. Immediately, the charge in the First Information Report (FIR) was altered to Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code.
