A sessions court in Salem on Friday awarded death to three activists of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK).
CHENNAI: A sessions court in Salem on Friday awarded death to three activists of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and seven years imprisonment to 25 others in the Dharmapuri bus burning case.
Three students of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University — Kokilavani, Gayathri and Hemalatha — were burnt alive when AIADMK activists set fire to their college bus in Ilakkiyampatti in Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu, hours after a special court had convicted AIADMK leader J Jayalalithaa in the Pleasant Stay Hotel case on February 2, 2000.
Jayalalithaa was accused of granting exemption from building and hill area development control rules for illegally constructing five floors of the hotel in Kodaikanal in 1994.
First additional sessions judge D Krishna Raja pronounced the death sentence for Nedunchezhiyan (34), Ravichandran (37) and C Muniyappan (45). The judge had, on Thursday, convicted 28 of the 31 accused in the case, which has been earlier dragging on in a Krishnagiri court.
The Madras High Court in September 2003 ordered transfer of the case to Salem and a fresh probe, based on a petition from the father of one of the victims that AIADMK activists were pressuring witnesses to turn hostile.
The judge also imposed a fine of Rs 59,000 each on the three, who were given death penalty, Rs 13,000 each on 24 other convicts and Rs 15,000 on another. One of the accused had died during the trial.
Winding up the arguments earlier, special public prosecutor R Srinivasan submitted that the burning alive three students was a “brutal, despicable and diabolical act executed with the sinister intention of achieving cheap political gains” and that it be treated as “the rarest of rare” cases.
“Such people, whose brutality is beyond human comprehension, should not be allowed to live in the society. They cannot be corrected and hence deserved the maximum punishment,” he said.
Defendant lawyers pleaded that the sentence may be reduced, prompting special public prosecutor R Srinivasan to intervene. “This is the minimum punishment,” he said.
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