It is six years since seven-year-old S. Sruthi fell through a gaping hole on the floor of her school bus and got crushed under its rear wheels. Still, the trial in the case is yet to be completed. Now the Madras High Court has found the prime accused N. Vijayan, correspondent of Zion Matriculation Higher Secondary School in Tambaram, to have “cleverly engineered a red herring” complaint in 2015 to side track the child’s death case booked in 2012.
Justice P.N. Prakash pointed out that the Mount traffic investigation wing here had registered a case of culpable homicide against the school correspondent on July 25, 2012, the day the child died. Subsequently, a chargesheet was filed against eight individuals by the end of that year. When the case was ripe for commencement of trial, the correspondent curiously lodged a complaint with Selaiyur police in 2015 claiming to be unaware of the ownership of the bus.
In the complaint, he had alleged that Yogesh Sylvera, the eighth accused in the culpable homicide case, had got the bus registered in the name of the school through forged signatures. The correspondent further succeeded in getting the complaint registered through an “innocuous template” order passed by the High Court to register a case if any cognisable offence was made out and made sure that a chargesheet was also filed in his favour in the 2015 case.
Armed with the chargesheet, he had filed the present petition to quash the case of culpable homicide booked against him in 2012. However, calling his bluff, Mr. Justice Prakash said, the court was not convinced with the argument feigning ignorance about ownership of the vehicle. The judge said, the registration certificate of the bus clearly states that it belongs to the school and it carries the seal of the school correspondent to prove the ownership.
Even otherwise, the correspondent was liable to be prosecuted for having reportedly not repaired the floor of the bus despite parents of as many as three school students having complained to him regarding the gaping hole in the bus, the judge said. He refused to accept the argument that the correspondent did not anticipate or foresee that such an incident leading to the death of the Class II student would ever happen and therefore he could not be prosecuted.
“When children are travelling in a bus, dictates of common sense would state that they will not be seated in their seat silently like they are seated in their classroom. They will be boisterous and chirpy. For the correspondent of a school to believe that they will be seated like hermits and be in meditation during travel and thereby, would not be victims of a fall, defies logic,” Mr. Justice Prakash said while dismissing the quash petition.
After recording the submission of Inspector of Selaiyur police station that he had conducted investigation on the correspondent’s 2015 complaint without informing the Mount traffic investigation wing and without obtaining permission from the trial court for further investigation, the judge quashed the 2015 complaint. He issued a direction to the Director General of Police to nominate an Inspector General of Police to probe the circumstances under which Selaiyur police investigated the case. “It is obvious to this court that only in order to torpedo the trial (in the main case), Dr. Vijayan, an influential and affluent person, has made a clever use of the judicial system... for destroying and torpedoing the prosecution... If this is not a devious subterfuge, what else is this?” the judge wondered. He finally directed a Sessions Court in Chengelpet to expedite the trial in the main case and cross examine the witnesses right on the day of their examination in chief.
