Chennai: Pakka is free at last. It does not matter that she had wasted 24 years of her prime youth in jail convicted along with her husband of murdering a stranger for his Rs 500 on a Coimbatore pavement in April 1990.
The Madras HC, before whom a kind lawyer-activist filed a petition seeking the release of the miserable woman, gone dumb and mentally challenged due to the rigours of jail life, closed the case after the state home department agreed to set free Pakka, alias Vijaya, convict No. 9958, now in her late 50s.
Officials at the Vellore women’s prison, where she had been lodged all these years after the sessions court awarded the couple life term for the murder, shifted her to an NGO close by for spending whatever remains of her miserable life, helped by regular treatment by psychiatrists. Her husband Subramani remains in the men’s prison at Vellore serving his life term.
Deccan Chronicle reported Pakka’s story on Friday. “We thank DC for helping us in this campaign to get this poor woman released. My petition for her release came up in the high court this morning and even before the arguments could begin, the home department submitted its order releasing Pakka on humanitarian grounds. It took them three years of dilly-dallying on our petition telling them she has developed mental problems and gone dumb,” said petitioner-advocate P. Pugalendhi.
He recalled that Pakka and Subramani were street performers in Coimbatore. A stranger allegedly tried to molest the woman while the couple slept on a pavement and Subramani hit him with a stone while trying to save his wife.
The stranger died and the two were charged with murder with a deadly weapon with intent to rob the man of his Rs 500. They had no money to appeal to higher courts and resigned to fate in their Vellore prison cells. Lawyer Radhakrishnan, who argued Pakka’s case for Pugalenthi, said he would next take up the case of Subramani for release.
