N Sathiya Moorthy
05 May 2005
In yet another bizarre turn to the Sankararaman murder case, the Tamil Nadu police have arrested Mutt manager Sundaresa Iyer and junior pontiffs brother Raghu under the anti-drugs law. They have now been charged with conspiring to murder construction contractor Ravi Subramaniam, who has turned approver in the Sankararaman murder case, in which the two Kanchi Shankaracharyas are the main accused. The current arrest does not make any difference to the jailed status of Iyer and Raghu. If anything, this would mean that the two could not be let off even if the Madras high court passes favourable orders on their petitions for quashing their one-year detention under the Goonda Act. As only a co-accused, bail for them is a near possibility what with the courts enlarging the two Shankaracharyas in the Sankararaman murder case and the Radhakrishnan assault case. But the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act bars bail for those involved in cases of more than 15-grams drug recovery. In this case, the police claim to have recovered three kilograms of cannabis from Akilan, the co-accused who has confessed to a conspiracy involving Sundaresa Iyer, Raghu and Kadhiravan, named as the leader of the gang that killed Sankararaman. According to the police, Sundaresa Iyer, Raghu and Kadiravan had conspired with Akilan and another co-inmate of the central prison, Chennai, for eliminating Ravi Subramanian. Enlarged on bail on April 18, Akilan had approached a person in Chennai, who gave him the money to procure cannabis from Tirupati. The police claim that Akilan had mentioned the conspiracy in the course of his interrogation after being picked up during a routine check-up. Akilan and the other jail-inmate are not associated with the Kanchi mutt cases.
While not questioning the drugs case against some of the key accused in the sensational Sankararaman murder case, senior police officials in the state caution against over-kill by their over-ambitious junior colleagues. "We need to remember that the entire nation is watching and that the Supreme Court is also seized of the matter. We should not do anything that the public could interpret as over-doing or the courts conclude as doubtful," says a senior official, not associated with the Kanchi cases.
As other senior officials point out, the drugs case against Sundaresa Iyer & Co comes at a time when the Supreme Court is already seized of a near-similar case against a Madurai-based girl, Serena, and her mother. The local media had carried photographs of Serena with M Natarajan, husband of Sasikala, the live-in confidante of chief minister Jayalalithaa and attributed other motives for the arrest.
Arguing the bail plea for the daughter-mother duo in the Supreme Court, senior counsel Kapil Sibal pointed out that the girl would have required all her life and more to amass the kind of wealth and purchase the quantum of drugs that the police claim to have recovered from her possession. The apex court has granted bail and stalled the Madurai court from trying the case. The main petition for quashing the trial proceedings is still pending before the Supreme Court.
Before Serena, Jayalalithaas one-time foster-son V N Sudhagaran had been arrested under the drugs law. So was her one-time aide and media consultant, Bhaskaran. During Jayalalithaas first term as chief minister, the Chennai police had detained Muthu, a one-time personal aide of her political mentor, the late M G Ramachandran, on charges of possessing drugs at the MGR Memorial in the city. The courts later acquitted Muthu. Before vanishing from the scene, Muthu, in media interviews, charged the powers-that-be with foisting a false case against him.
"With this background, the state police has to do more than convincing the courts of the genuineness of the drugs case against the trio now," says a police officer. "One wrong step and neither the political class nor the higher judiciary is going to take kindly to the current exercise." In this context, other sources refer to the state government filing a POTA case against the MDMK supremo Vaiko and Tamil journalist Nakkeeran Gopal. Quips a senior leader of the opposition DMK: "Whatever be the justification for their detention under POTA, the detention, instead of black-balling Vaiko made him that much more popular - if that was the intention of the decision-makers in the first place."
Adds a legal expert in this regard: "The higher judiciary is not going to like political and istrative processes that tend to render existing laws irrelevant by doubtful application. Given the fact that POTA has been annulled by Parliament and that the sensational Serena case is due for final disposal, some of us are keeping our fingers crossed on the matter as a whole."
Incidentally, the fresh case against Sundaresa Iyer, Raghu and Kadiravan comes in the midst of the district and sessions judge at Chingleput posting the Sankararaman murder case for further hearing on June 16, when the court reopens after summer vacation. Pending the Supreme Court orders in Sankaracharya Jayendra Saraswatis plea for transferring the case out of Tamil Nadu, the trial is likely to commence soon thereafter. The alternative may be for the state government to get the case transferred to the fast-track court at Chingleput, which has had the record of completing a murder trial in less than seven weeks.
The author is Honorary Director, Observer Research Foundation-Chennai Chapter.
Courtesy: Sahara Time, New Delhi, May 10-16, 2005.
* Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Observer Research Foundation.
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