Chennai: Madras High Court has rapped a sessions court in Salem for completing a murder trial in 20 days and sentencing three accused to life imprisonment, saying such “fast tracking” in the guise of administering justice is “unacceptable” as “justice hurried is justice buried”.
A bench comprising Justices S Rajeswaran and PN Prakash, which ordered the release of two indigent murder convicts, asked, “Will this happen to the rich and influential in this country?.” The Salem court completed the trial in 20 days in 2009 and sentenced three persons to life in prison.
While one of the trio died in jail, another chose not to appeal against his conviction. The third convict Paulraj's case was taken up in high court by advocate Philip Ravindran Jesudoss who did not charge any fee for the same.
As per the prosecution, on August 8, 2009, the body of a woman was found by the residents of Annadanapatti village near a rivulet.
Within two days, police arrested three persons—rag picker Paulraj, petty trader Kannadasan and rickshaw-puller Balamurugan—and said they had confessed to having murdered the woman.
Police said that the trio told them that they had together engaged the victim, who was a sex worker. But as she refused
to have sex with them after initially agreeing to it, they smothered her and hit her and, after she died as a result, they buried her body in the riverbed.
A charge sheet was filed in three days and on August 14, 2009, the charges were framed and the trial began. After two days of holidays from August 15, the entire trial formalities were completed in the next two days and all three sentenced to life imprisonment.
Stunned by the speed with which the sessions court had handled the case, high court said in its order, “The deceased is a sex worker. The accused are ragpickers and rickshaw-wallahs.
Before they could realise what was happening around them, everything was over.”
The entire investigation and trial process “is clearly violative of Article 21 of the Constitution”, the judges said.
Slamming the sessions judge for conducting a faulty trial, the judges said, “Criminal jurisprudence has been re-written by the trial judge.
“The evidence of prosecution witnesses sounds like the cooked up testimony of the two witnesses who gave evidence against Jesus Christ in a sham trial which resulted in His crucifixion... It does not inspire our confidence at all.”
For his pro bono act, the advocate got kudos from the judges, who said: “We place on record our sincere appreciation for the efforts taken by Jesudoss, who has served the Lord by rendering this service to the forlorn and indigent. This, in our opinion, is true legal aid.”
The bench then ordered the release of Paulraj and extended the benefit to Balamurugan as well, relying on a Supreme Court judgement.
