MADURAI, MARCH 8
The Special Court for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe cases in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, on March 8 sentenced Yuvaraj, a self-styled leader of a caste Hindu outfit, to life-time imprisonment by slapping three life sentences for the murder of a 21-year-old Dalit youth, V Gokulraj, for his ‘friendship’ with a girl, belonging to the intermediate Kongu Vellalar Gounder caste, in Namakkal district of Tamil Nadu in 2015. The judgment in the case was delivered on March 5.
The sentences were awarded under the provisions of both the Indian Penal Code and the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendments Act. As a result, the accused would not be able to get the benefit of remission on the claim of ‘good conduct’ unlike the accused in the Melavalavu and Chennagarampatti cases who were given remission of their sentences last year by the then All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government because the provisions of the SC/ST Act were not invoked on them. These cases involved two incidents of murder of the Melavalavu village president and around seven more Dalits in these villages in Madurai districts by caste Hindus in the late 1990s, reports Frontline.
The sentences for the other accused in the Gokulraj case, pronounced by Judge T. Sampathkumar, included three life terms and also life-time conviction for Arun, who was the driver of Yuvaraj, and Kumar, the accused no.3. Those who were given double life sentences included Sathishkumar, Raghu alias Sridhar, Ranjith, Selvaraj and Chandrasekaran. The other two, Prabhu and Giridhar, got a life term besides five-year sentences each. The judge also imposed fines on them.
While seventeen were charge-sheeted, five were acquitted. Of the other two, one died during the trial while the other person was arrested later and was facing trial separately at the Namakkal Sessions under the split case category. The accused were booked under sections 120(b), 364 read with 34, 109, 384, 465, 468, 471 r/w 468, 302, 201, 212 and 216 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 3(2) (v) of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act.
