9 Tamil Nadu cops convicted in 2020 father-son custodial killings case

MADURAI: Nearly six years after a father-son duo -- P Jeyaraj and his son J Beniks – were tortured and killed by Sathankulam police while in custody, a sessions court in Madurai found all the nine police personnel guilty of the double-murder.

First additional district and sessions court G Muthukumaran, who read out the verdict on Monday, will reveal the quantum of punishment for the convicted cops on March 30. The judge has also sought a report on the last property statement of the accused and their salary certificates.

All the nine convicted cops -- inspector S Sridhar, sub-inspectors K Balakrishnan, P Raghu Ganesh, head constables S Murugan and A Samadurai, and four constables -- M Muthuraja, S Chelladurai, X Thomas Francis and S Vailmuthu -- were produced in the court. A 10th suspect, the then special sub-inspector Paldurai, who too had been arrested, died of Covid-19 in August 2020. On Monday, after the verdict was read out, they were escorted back to the Madurai Central Prison.

Jeyaraj and Beniks were taken to the Sathankulam police in Tuticorin district late in the evening on June 19, 2020, on charges of having kept their shop open beyond the deadline during the Covid-19 lockdown. They were brutally assaulted by the policemen at night and were lodged in Kovilpatti sub-jail the next day. Beniks died of injuries at the Kovilpatti GH on June 22, 2020, while his father Jeyaraj died on June 23, 2020.

After the double-murder in custody triggered a public outcry Madras high court suo motu cognizance of the custodial deaths June 24, 2020. On June 29, the high court handed over the case to the CBI.

After the Tuticorin principal district judge, who had been closely monitoring the case, informed that personnel at the police station were not cooperating with the Kovilpatti judicial magistrate's inquiry, the high court directed the Tuticorin district collector to depute revenue officers for taking control of the police station for collecting relevant materials.

The CBI filed the chargesheet against nine policemen on Sept 25, 2020. It filed a supplementary chargesheet on Aug 12, 2022.

In the final report, CBI said that since Jeyaraj had been detained at the police station, his son Beniks went there asking for the reason for his detention.

As a scuffle ensued between him and policemen, inspector S Sridhar intervened and asked the other policemen to teach Beniks a lesson on "how to behave with police". The two of them were subjected to several rounds of torture and their clothes removed to add brutality to their torture.

The central agency gave a graphic description of the custodial torture meted out to the two. It said the duo was made to bow down on a wooden table in their underwear and their hands and legs were caught hold of by the policemen.

They were subjected to several rounds of beatings using wooden lathi on their buttocks, back and other parts of their body. Investigation revealed that during the torture, Beniks was asked to clean the blood that oozed from their wounds and blood stains on the floor of the police station with his own vest.

Sridhar asked the sweeper also to clean the floor of the main hall and other places at the police station the next morning to destroy the evidence. Blood-stained clothes were changed twice before taking them to the hospital and their clothes changed at the hospital before taking them for remand.

All these clothes were dumped in the hospital dustbin to destroy the evidence. It was also revealed that Jeyaraj and Beniks had not violated the lockdown norms and that there was no altercation between them and the police officials at Kamarajar Salai at Sathankulam on June 19, 2020 evening. Investigation revealed that a false case was registered against them, the CBI said.