Madurai: The investigation into the 2012 murder of DMK functionary K. N. Ramajayam, brother of former transport minister K. N. Nehru, was on Tuesday transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation by the Madurai bench of the Madras high court. Justice A. M. Basheer Ahamed directed the CBI, Chennai, to nominate an investigation officer to complete the investigation and file a status report within three months before the court.
“To overcome all possibilities of suspicion in the minds of family members of the deceased or in the minds of the public at large with regard to the investigation of the mysterious death of a prominent person and also a politician of the opposition party, this case can be transferred to the CBI for conducting investigation from the threshold and for filing a report in accordance with law,” observed Justice Ahamed in his order.
The judgement was passed on a petition filed by Ramajayam’s wife Latha in December 2014 seeking to transfer the case to the CBI as state police including the CBCID could not crack the case in the last five years. Ramajayam, aged 50, was brutally murdered on March 29, 2012, apparently after he was abducted by unidentified assailants from posh Thillai Nagar at Tiruchy on Thursday. He had left home for his morning walk at around 5.15 am.
The motive behind the murder and the culprits who committed the crime remain a mystery till today. State government transferred the case from Thillai Nagar police to the CBCID, but without any result. After the case was taken up for hearing in the Madurai bench, the CBCID police had filed 12 interim status reports, each time, asking the court for extension of time for further investigation, even after the court had given a final ultimatum on two occasions of the hearing.
In the last hearing, the court had made a critical observation that the status reports filed by the CBCID were not fresh ones but cut and paste jobs of previous reports. The CBI was reluctant to take the case for investigation, citing lack of machinery, but was countered by the petitioner’s counsel in the previous hearing referring to the Supreme Court order that it can seek the assistance of state government to carry out the investigation. The court then reserved it for final orders.
