A writ petition has been filed in the Madras High Court Bench here seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the death of two individuals in a reported police encounter near Manamadurai in Sivaganga district on November 30.
When the case filed by S. Muthu Thevar (62), father of one of the two victims, came up for hearing before Justice R. Subbiah on Friday afternoon, he referred it to a Division Bench after hearing preliminary arguments advanced by the petitioner’s counsel Veera Kathiravan.
Referring to S. Velladurai as an ‘encounter specialist’ working as Manamadurai Deputy Superintendent of Police, the counsel alleged that the duo had been shot dead at point blank range for the sole reason that they were the accused in the murder of a Sub-Inspector of Police.
He also said that the petitioner’s son M. Prabhu and the co-accused Bharathi had surrendered voluntarily before a Judicial Magistrate in Tiruppur in connection with the murder case. Therefore, it was hard to believe that they later tried to escape and challenged the police in an encounter. In his affidavit, the petitioner claimed that many leading journals had carried news items, much before the encounter, that Mr. Velladurai was transferred from Madurai city police to Manamadurai only for the purpose of finishing off his son and the other accused in a fake encounter.
Claiming that the police officer had so far killed 12 people on different occasions, the petitioner said that his son had actually been murdered brutally by the men in uniform at the instruction of their superiors including Madurai City Commissioner of Police and Sivaganga Superintendent of Police.
“I do not have any faith in the State police. They might not conduct a fair and proper investigation. To secure the ends of justice, the State police should not be allowed to conduct the investigation into the encounter deaths. Only a neutral and national level agency should take up the investigation,” he added.
The petitioner also wanted the State Government to pay adequate compensation to the families of the two victims besides an interim direction to the police not to carry on with the investigation until the disposal of the present case.
