Chennai: Expressing disappointment over today’s Madras High Court verdict commuting the death sentence to life for five convicts, while acquitting one person in the sensational 2016 Udumalpet Sankar honour killing case, the victim’s wife Kausalya has said she would go for an appeal.
“The judgement is disappointing and shaking. I will file an appeal in the Supreme court soon. My fight for justice will continue,” Kausalya told the media.
Delivering the verdict on appeals filed by six death convicts, a life convict and another person awarded five years jail term, a Division Bench comprising Justice M Sathyanarayanan and Justice M Nirmal Kumar also dismissed the appeals filed by the State police against the acquittal of three other accused from the case.
The Bench, while commuting the death penalty to life to five accused, acquitted Kausalya’s father B Chinnasamy (cited as accused Number one) of all charges, including that of criminal conspiracy, and also upheld the acquittal of her mother C Annalakshmi and two others by the trial court.
The Judges, while setting aside the death penalty awarded to the five accused, modified them to life imprisonment for a minimum of 25 years without any right to remission.
They also directed that all the acquitted persons, who were now in jail, were ordered to be released forthwith if their custody was not required in connection with any other case.
It may be recalled that V Sankar, a final year mechanical engineering student belonging to a Scheduled Caste, was hacked to death by an armed gang on 13 March, 2016, for having married his collegemate C Kowsalya, belonging to Thevar (Other Backward Class) community.
Sankar was allegedly killed at the behest of Chinnasamy, Annalakshmi and maternal uncle P Pandidurai, who had hired contract killers to commit the honour killing, which had sent shock waves across the state.
After the trial, the Principal District and Sessions Court in Tiruppur convicted and awarded death penalty to six convicts, including Chinnasamy, his friend P Jagadeesan and other killers M Manikandan, P Selvakumar, P Kalaithamilvaanan alias Tamil alias Kalai and M Mathan alias Michael.
The court also convicted two other members of the gang K Dhanraj alias Tamil alias Stephen Dhanraj and M Manikandan and sentenced them to life imprisonment and five years respectively, while acquitting Annalakshmi, Pandidurai and one of the alleged killers V Prasanna alias Prasannakumar, of all charges on 12 December, 2017.
On an appeal filed by the six death convicts and the other two convicts, the Bench after hearing marathon arguments that lasted over an year, reserved their verdict in February this year following which the verdict was delivered today.
Meanwhile, the Tamilnadu police also filed a petition challenging the acquittal of the three accused, which was also dismissed by the court.