Bus burning: Three AIADMK arsonists sent to the gallows (Second Lead)

NEW DELHI/CHENNAI - The Supreme Court Monday upheld a trial court’s decision to send three AIADMK activists to the gallows for killing three girl students of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University by torching their bus in 2000.

The AIADMK activists are C. Muniappa, Madhu alias Ravindran and Nedu alias Nedunchezhian.

The burning incident took place near Dharampuri in Tamil Nadu in February 2000.

Three agriculture university girls were burnt alive and several others sustained burns when the bus they were travelling in was set on fire by AIADMK activists protesting party chief J. Jayalalithaa’s conviction in the Kodaikanal Pleasant Stay Hotel unauthorised construction case.

The apex court Monday upheld the death penalty of three convicts and released other 25 convicts who were awarded two-year sentences but are currently on bail after serving 14 months in jail.

The court said that since the incident had taken place more than 10 and-a-half-years ago and they have already suffered a lot, thus, their sentences deserved to be reduced.

Describing it as a rarest of the rare case, an apex court bench of Justice G.S. Singhvi and Justice B.S. Chauhan said in their judgment that “their activities were not only barbaric but inhuman of the highest degree”.

“The manner of the commission of offence in the present case is extremely brutal, diabolical, grotesque and cruel. It is shocking to the collective conscience of society,” the court said.

Writing the judgment for the bench, Justice Chauhan said that the demonstration, which started peacefully, soon took an ugly turn and the demonstrators became a law unto themselves.

The appellants (those awarded the death sentence) had “evil designs” to cause damage to a greater extent so that people may learn a “lesson”.

Th judgment said that in order to succeed in their mission, the three convicts went to the extent of “sprinkling petrol in a bus full of girl students and setting it on fire with the students still inside the bus”.

“They were fully aware that the girls might not be able to escape when they set the bus on fire. As it happened, some of the girls did not escape the burning bus,” the court said.

The judgment said that the act of the perpetrators of the crime was “heinous, barbaric and inhuman”. The judgment also slammed the general public and police present at the spot for doing nothing to save the girls.

The judgment said that if police had discharged its duties then perhaps precious lives could have been saved.

The court said that the incident took place in the midst of the city and there were people, police, media persons and shopkeepers around but no one moved to save the hapless girls.

“Even if the common man fails to respond to the call of his conscience, police should not have remained inactive. The so-called administration did not bother to find out why police did not intervene and assist in the rescue of the girl students,” the court said.

“It is clear that the so-called protectors of society stood there and witnessed such a heinous crime being committed and allowed the burning of the bus and roasting of the innocent children without being reprimanded for failing in their duty,” the judgment said.

However, the court did take note of the fact that some of the male students of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University did come to the rescue of the girls crying for help and succeeded in saving some of them.

A Chennai court had in February 2000 convicted and sentenced Jayalalithaa and four others to a one-year jail term each for legalising the unauthorised construction of the seven-storeyed Pleasant Stay Hotel at Kodaikanal when she was the chief minister 1991-96.

“I welcome the Supreme Court order. I am sad that it took a long time for justice to be delivered,” said K. Kasiammal, the mother of Hemalatha who died in the arson attack.

Speaking to reporters near Chennai, Kasiammal hoped that no other innocent person dies of mindless violence in future and wished her husband R. Kesavachandran, a former banker, was alive to hear the judgment.

“The judgment is a lesson for others. I am happy that the guilty have been punished rightly so that such violence does not happen again,” Kumaraswamy, father of another victim, Kokilavani, told reporters at Namakkal district near Coimbatore.

–Indo Asian News Service