The Madras High Court Bench here on Wednesday revived the hearing on an appeal filed by the CBI in 2010 challenging the acquittal of all 17 accused from the 2007 Dinakaran newspaper office attack case.
A Division Bench of Justices S. Nagamuthu and V.S. Ravi ordered appointment of a legal aid counsel to represent 16 of the 17 accused, with the lone exception being Deputy Superintendent of Police V. Rajaram, since their advocates had chosen to withdraw from appearance.
The judges posted the appeal for hearing on September 3 and directed the High Court Registry to circulate the case bundle to the legal aid counsel N. Anand Kumar who, in turn, was directed to put the 16 accused on notice and inform them about his appointment by the court.
V.P. Pandi alias ‘Attack’ Pandi, once a close aide of former Union minister M.K. Alagiri, was one of the prime accused in the case booked following the death of three newspaper employees when a mob hurled petrol bombs on the office building here on May 9, 2007.
The attack had taken place pursuant to publication of the results of a survey in which DMK president M. Karunanidhi’s younger son M.K. Stalin reportedly emerged as the preferred choice to be his political heir than the elder son Mr. Alagiri.
After investigation, the CBI filed a charge sheet against 17 persons including M. Murugan alias ‘Sori' Murugan, P. Thirumurugan alias ‘Kaattuvasi' Murugan and Mr. Rajaram who was accused of failing to perform of his duty despite being present at the place of occurrence.
However, the Principal District and Sessions Judge N. Retnaraj acquitted all the accused from the case on December 9, 2009 for want of sufficient evidence. Thereafter, the CBI filed a petition in the High Court in July 2010 to condone 118 days’ delay in preferring the present appeal.
The High Court condoned the delay on March 14, 2011 after accepting CBI’s contention that the delay was caused due to time taken in obtaining approval from the Centre. Thereafter, the court took up for hearing an application filed by CBI seeking leave to file the appeal. The application, filed under Section 378(3) of the Code of Criminal Procedure which requires the State to obtain leave from the court before preferring appeals against acquittal, was opposed by the accused. Yet, the court allowed the application on June 29, 2011.
Subsequently, in March 2014, Poongodi, mother of the one of the three newspaper employees who died in the attack, filed a revision petition in the High Court challenging the acquittal and urged the court to condone the delay of 1,434 days in filing the petition.
In April 2014, the court ordered notice to the accused through newspaper publication and condoned the delay in June 2014 after eschewing objections raised by them.
