Kumbakonam fire case adjourned till July 4

Kumbakonam, June 27: Nearly an year after the chargesheet was filed in the gruesome fire mishap that killed 94 school children in 2004, a Judicial Magistrate court here today adjourned the case to July four, for furnishing copies of the chargesheet to the accused.

When the matter came up for hearing, Kumbakonam Judicial Magistrate Kinsley Christopher adjourned the case to July four stating that copies were not yet ready.

All the 24 accused and approver Prabhakaran (former headmaster of the school) were present in the court.

The voluminous 4,054 page chargesheet in the case, was filed on July seven last year and it cited 483 evidences.

In all 25 people have been cited as accused, of which one of them had turned approver.

Initially police had arrested 18 people, including School correspondent Pulavar Palaniswamy and Muthu Palaniswamy, who was the then Chief Educational Officer of Thanjavur district, immediately after the incident. Seven more people were added to the list of accused in the course of investigation.

Charges under Sec 120 (B), 304, 108 and 338 of the IPC have been registered against them.

The accused are Pulavar Palaniswamy, his wife Saraswathi, Shanthalakshmi (Headmistress), Vijayalaskshmi (Noon-meal employee), Vasanthi (Aayah), Devi, Mahalakshmi and Anthoniyammal (all teachers), Mr Muthu Palaniswamy, Mr Palaniswamy (then District Elementary Education Officer), Narayanaswamy (former District Education Officer), Radhakrishnan (former Assistant Education Officer), Paramasivam, (former Tasildhar), Madhavan, of the Elementary Education Department, Sivaprakasam (an assistant in the CEO office), Balaji (retired District Education Officer), Balakrishnan (former Assistant Elementary Education Officer), Durairaj (Personal Assistant to the District Education Officer), Thandavam, (Superintendent of the District Education Officer), Balasubramanian (former Assistant Education Officer), Satyamurthy (former Municipal Commissioner), Murugaiyan (former town planning officer), Jayachandran (private engineer) and Kannan (Director, Elementary Education).

Mr Prabhakaran, former headmaster, Saraswathi High school, who was initially cited as the accused, turned approver later.

Ninetyfour school children, aged between eight and ten, were charred to death, several of them beyond recognition, in the fire that raged through the Sri Krishna Girls High School complex housing primary, middle and high schools on July 16, 2004.

The fire had started from the kitchen, where the noon meal for nursery children was being prepared, and soon spread to a row of thatched roof classrooms where students from class one to five were present. Five classrooms on the third floor of the Saraswati Nursery School were gutted, trapping the children.

UNI