Chennai: Dinakaran office attack— 9 get lifeterms

Chennai: Nine persons accused of setting fire to the Sun Group owned Dinakaran newspaper in Madurai on May 9, 2007 have been sentenced to life imprisonment by the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Thursday. The attack with petrol bombs and other deadly weapons had left three employees dead.

Holding that the prosecution had proved the case beyond doubt, the bench comprising Justices PN Prakash and B Pugalendhi also imposed jail terms of five years upon these nine convicts, including the main culprit 'Attack Pandi', a close aide of former Union Minister MK Alagiri. All the jail terms will run concurrently.

In a stunning verdict that has gone into the nuances of not only the jurisprudence of the case but also the horrid nature of the human tragedy, the judges slammed the police on guard at the attacked place while observing that the then DSP Rajaram could have easily averted the arson if only he had used his service gun to fire in the air to scare away the murderous mob.     

On account of his "supine indifference and wilful and intentional failure" to prevent the attack and arrest those involved, three precious lives were lost, said the anguished Justice Prakash, who read out the judgment.

The court thereby ordered the state government to pay solatium of Rs 5 lakh each to the families of the deceased Dinakaran staff - Vinod Kumar, Gopinath and Muthuramalingam - within three months. Also, the order of acquittal of Rajaram, since retired from service, passed by the trial court was set aside and he was ordered to be present before the court on March 25 to answer on the quantum of sentence. Six other accused have been acquitted while Saravanamuthu, another accused, died during the course of the trial.

The CBI, which probed the case, had named 17 persons in its chargesheet including then DSP Rajaram. The trail court had acquitted all the 17 accused in December 2009, holding that the CBI failed to prove the case beyond all reasonable doubt, following which the probe agency filed appeal before the High Court in March 2011.  In its order now, the High Court has awarded jail terms for life and five years, to run concurrently, to prime accused 'Attack' Pandi, Arogya Prabhu (A3), Vijya Pandi (A6), P Kandasamy (A7), G Ramaiah Panian (A9), V Sudhakar (A12), Thirumurugan (A14), Ruban (A15), and Malik Batcha (A16).  The case relates to the arson attack on the Madurai edition of Dinakaran newspaper owned by Kalanidhi Maran, after it published a survey showing MK Stalin as the people-preferred political heir to  M Karunanidhi.