The murder case of Veeranan, whose killer wife was exonerated by police on the ground of self defence in February this year, took a curious turn on Saturday following the release of former Collector U Sagayam’s letter recommending to the Home Secretary to transfer the case to the CB-CID.
This request was made in a letter that he sent to the home secretary on April, 30, 2012, when he was the Collector of Madurai. Sagayam’s letter came to light after S Samayamuthu, father of the murdered Veeranan, wanted to know what action had been taken on his complaint to the Collector that claimed his son was murdered by a team and not by Usharani, his daughter-in-law, alone.
Veeranan alias Jothibasu of Chinthamani was married to Usharani in 1990 and had three daughters and a son. The couple was divorced after Usharani filed a petition. They reunited in 2011 after 10 years.
Samayamuthu, in his petition to the Collector, alleged that his son Veeranan was murdered as per a plan hatched by Usha Rani, her father Chandran, brothers Rajkumar and Ramkumar and one Nageswaran. Samayamuthu also alleged the police had concocted a story of Usha Rani clobbering Veeranan with a cricket bat in self defence when he attempted to molest his own daughter.
Invoking the provisions of Section 100 of the Indian Penal Code, the SP freed Usha Rani on the ground of right to self defence.
Sagayam, in his letter said photographs of Veeranan taken after postmortem revealed multiple injuries all over his body implying that the death might not have occurred due to thrashing with a cricket bat on head alone. Moreover, the nature of injuries gave room to the surmise that this crime could not have been committed by a lone woman. and it needed to be probed.
The police also registered a case against Samayamuthu and his kin on February 17, the day he went to the media questioning the self defence theory of police, for an instance that supposedly happened on February 9. The police also arrested Krishnan, son-in-law of Samayamuthu. “The filing of FIR and arresting them seems to be an after thought and vindictive attitude of SP (Asra Garg) to strangle the morale and spirit of the petitioner Samayamuthu,” the then Collector said in his letter.
“The mobile phone used by the murdered Veeranan was not recovered. The confessions made by the accused Usha Rani indicate that she had squeezed the private organ of the deceased till he died. This apparently goes against the theory of self defence as she had clear intention of killing him. This need to be probed,” U Sagayam had noted.
The question, whether the investigation officer had any authority to release the accused at the investigation stage itself when there was a cold blood murder, needs to be answered. The collector then quoted two judgments to stress that the question of releasing the accused under the self defence provision should be considered only during the trial in a court of law.
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