HC sets aside life sentence in murder case

Chennai, Apr 22 (UNI) Madras High Court has set aside a lower court order convicting and sentencing three accused to life in a murder case.

Allowing appeals filed by Mohamed Illas, Nazar and Abbas, seeking to set aside the II Additional Sessions Judge, Coimbatore, order sentencing them to life in the Ananda Kumar murder case, Mr Justice R Balasubramanian and Mr Justice P P S Janarthana Raja, acquitted them.

There was communal disturbance in Coimbatore on November 29, 1997.

On December 1, 1997, the accused came together with the common intention of murdering Ananda Kumar and hacked him to death in a garden belonging to one Chettiyar near Chinnapalam.

The lower court awarded life imprisonment to them on July 30, 2001. Challenging this, they preferred the present appeals.

Senior Counsel V Gopinath and Advocate A Sirajuddin appearing for them contended that the entire case of the prosecution rested on oral evidence of alleged eye witnesses and all of them had come for examination only on January 15, 1998, almost 45 days after the death. Large scale arrests were made at that time on account of communal clashes and picking and choosing among those arrested, the present case had been foisted, they said.

The bench said, ''We have no doubt at all that though the prosecution established that Ananda Kumar had been done to death, there are innumerable doubts in our minds as to whether the death could have been caused only by the accused put up for trial or by anybody else.'' ''Consequently, giving the benefit of substantial doubt to the accused, we are inclined to set aside the order of the judgement under challenge. Accordingly, all the three accused are acquitted of the offences,'' it added.

UNI XR SC VP0445