Pursuing a case of suspected murder and disposal of bodies on the bank of the Manimuthar river, the High Court-appointed Legal Commissioner, U. Sagayam, ordered and personally supervised an exhumation operation on Saturday.
Following a petition from M. Sevarkodiyan, who used to work as a lorry driver with PRP Granite Company, claiming that he had witnessed the burial of two mentally challenged persons who were brought dead to the spot in 1999, Mr. Sagayam ordered that the bodies be exhumed. They were suspected to be buried on the bank of Manimuthar river.
The Commission had been examining various allegations into the granite quarries here for the past 10 months.
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When mediapersons went to the spot near Melur, 40 km from here, the panel members, including Mr. Sagayam, were visibly irked over the delay in commencement of exhumation.
“We had informed the authorities in the morning, but they seemed to be reluctant and delayed the work,” a member said.
When the situation looked like the work would begin, some police personnel said that they could do so only in the presence of doctors. When a team of doctors arrived in the evening, they insisted on a direction from the District Collector since it had to be done after sunset.
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At this point, Mr. Sagayam asked, “Who is big, the High Court or a District Collector. I am standing here since morning. I am conducting the investigations on the directive of the court… When people have destroyed vast stretches of hillock, what is the guarantee that the evidence would be there till tomorrow,” he asked the officials.
K. Velu, retired Additional Superintendent of Police and a member of the panel, told them that exhumation could be done after sunset if high-power lights were made available and that the panel would wait at the spot and even stay overnight if necessary.
A senior police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, questioned the powers of the panel to order exhumation when it was clearly a law and order matter and had to be reported and dealt with by police.
At the time of going to the press, Mr. Sagayam was at the burial site.
A PRP Granite Company driver claims to have seen two mentally challenged persons buried on river bank