Madhu case: court sends hostile witness for vision test

The Special Court for SC/ST (PoA) Act, Mannarkkad, hearing the lynching case of Attappady Madhu, has ordered the eye-testing of a witness who turned hostile on Wednesday.

Sunil Kumar, witness number 29, turned hostile during the trial on Wednesday saying that he could not either see or recognise the people in the video footage of Madhu being brought after catching him and beating him. Sunil Kumar was also seen in that video. In his statement given earlier to the police, Sunil Kumar had said that he saw the accused bringing Madhu and shooting his video.

When Sunil Kumar turned hostile saying that he could not see anything in the video, Special Court judge K.M. Ratheesh Kumar ordered that his vision be tested by an ophthalmologist at Government Hospital, Palakkad.

Meanwhile, the Forest department on Wednesday sacked Sunil Kumar from his service as a temporary forest watcher. Two other temporary forest watchers too had been sacked after they turned hostile in the same case.

Witness number 31, Deepu, also turned hostile on Wednesday, raising the number of witnesses who turned hostile during the trial to 16. Saidalavi, witness number 27, had turned hostile on Tuesday. However, two other witnesses, Rajesh and Vijayakumar, testified in support of the prosecution on Tuesday.

With 16 witnesses having turned hostile, the prosecution and Madhu’s family expressed concern in getting conviction for all the accused in the case.

The Special Court for SC/ST (PoA) Act, apparently alarmed by the chain reaction of the witnesses, had earlier ordered the cancellation of the bail given to 12 of the accused, following a plea by the prosecution. The High Court, however, stayed the Mannarkkad court’s order, saying that the lower court had no authority to cancel the bail given by the High Court.

It was on February 22, 2018 that Madhu, 27, from Kadukumanna tribal hamlet, near Mukkali, in Attappady was captured, tied and beaten up by a group of men on charges of alleged thefts. They handed him over to the police, but Madhu died on the way to hospital. The cause of the death was internal injuries he suffered from the beating.

The police arrested the accused after two days when Madhu’s death triggered a row following circulation of photographs and videos on social media of his being tied and beaten up.

All the 16 accused, however, secured conditional bails from the High Court on May 30, 2018. With the accused being released on bail, the trial of the case got inordinately delayed and no special prosecutor was willing to take up the case.

Following pressures from Madhu’s family and human rights activists, and the High Court’s intervention, the Special Court for SC/ST (PoA) Act, Mannarkkad, began the trial on June 8, 2022. But within three months of the trial, 16 witnesses turned hostile, raising concerns of the prosecution losing the case.