The Madras High Court Bench here on Tuesday ordered notice through newspaper publication to 16 of the 17 individuals acquitted in the 2007 Dinakaran office attack case, asking them to appear either in person or through their counsel on June 10.
Justice G.M. Akbar Ali passed the order on a petition filed by Poongodi, mother of one of the three newspaper employees who lost their lives in the attack, to condone the delay of 1,434 days in filing a revision petition against the acquittal by a lower court in 2009.
The court had ordered notice on March 5 itself; however, it was informed on Tuesday that the notice was returned without completion of service to 16 of them. Only one accused, V. Sudhakar, engaged counsel to defend him.
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Hence, the judge directed the petitioner’s lawyer to publish a private notice in the Madurai edition of a Tamil evening daily, indicating that all the 16 accused should make arrangements for the hearing after the summer vacation for the court in May.
A mob hurled petrol bombs inside the newspaper office on May 9, 2007, after the newspaper published the results of a survey which projected DMK president M. Karunanidhi’s younger son M.K. Stalin as his most preferred successor rather than elder son M.K. Alagiri.
The then DMK government handed over the probe to the CBI, which filed a charge sheet against 17 individuals, including a DSP accused of failure to prevent the attack. However, the Principal District and Sessions Court here acquitted all of them on December 9, 2009, for want of sufficient evidence. Even as an appeal filed by the CBI in July 2010 was still pending in the High Court Bench, the mother of one of the victims came up with the review petition.
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