Tamil Nadu bus burning: Apex court gives death to three (Lead, changing dateline)

NEW DELHI/CHENNAI - The Supreme Court Monday confirmed the death penalty to three AIADMK activists who caused the death of three women university students by torching their bus near Dharampuri, Tamil Nadu, in February 2000.

The 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 bench of Justice P. Sathasivam and Justice B.S. Chauhan held that the killing of the three women fell in the “rarest of the rare” category, and said that sprinkling kerosene on the bus, knowing well that the students inside would not be able to escape, was nothing but a premeditated act.

The court noted that the protesters did not even heed to the pleadings of the teachers in the bus travelling with the girl students.

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

The judgment said that if police had acted in discharge of their duty, perhaps the precious lives could have been saved.

The three convicted are C. Muniappan, Madhu alias Ravindran and Nedu alias Nedunchezhian.

A Chennai court had in February 2000 convicted and sentenced Jayalalithaa and four others to 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, 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