Mannarkkad: The Mannarkkad Special Court for Scheduled Caste Scheduled Tribe has found 14 accused in the Madhu Murder Case guilty of charges under IPC 304(2) for culpable homicide. The accused are Husain, Maraikkar, Shamsudeen, Radhakrishnan, Abubacker, Siddique, Ubaid, Najeeb, Jaijumon, Muneer Sajeev, Satheesh, Hareesh and Biju. The quantum of punishment will be announced on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the fourth and eleventh accused, Aneesh and Abdul Kareem, have been acquitted by the court. Aneesh was accused of capturing and propagating Madhu’s visuals of attack on social media, whereas Maraikkar was charged for insulting Madhu, calling him a thief. 

The names of the accused (from one to 16 ) are Hussain, Maraikkar, Shamsudeen, Aneesh, Radhakrishnan, Abubacker, Siddique, Ubaid, Najeeb, Jaijumon, Abdul Karim, Sajeev, Satheesh, Hareesh, Biju and Muneer. 

Madhu, a tribal man from Chindakki hamlet in Attappady, Palakkad, was killed after he was caught, tied and thrashed by a group of local people alleging theft of food articles from a grocery shop on February 22, 2018. He was assaulted by the mob and later handed over to the police. 

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Photo: Mathrubhumi
Officials in front of the Mannarkkad Court | Photo: Mathrubhumi

However, the tribal youth collapsed and died while on the way to the hospital. According to the post-mortem report, Madhu had injuries on the head and bruises all over the body, including broken ribs, as well as internal bleeding.

Two days later, following an uproar over the incident, a special investigation team (SIT) filed a 3,000 page chargesheet and named a total of 16 people as accused in the case. They were charged with offences under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. 

However, all the accused were granted bail with strict conditions by the high court in May 2018. 

Three months later, a special court for trial of offences under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act in Mannarkkad, cancelled the bail of 12 accused, accepting the prosecution's argument that under their influence, several witnesses had turned hostile during the trial.

The special court said that on the evaluation of the entire materials brought before it by the prosecution, it came to the conclusion that the accused have influenced the witnesses and attempted to challenge, rather dictate the whole criminal administrative system of the country.

Furthermore, there were several alleged attempts to sabotage the case by offering money to influence the witness coupled with the government’s apparent delay in appointing a public prosecutor. 
As per reports, it was at the request of Madhu’s mother that a special public prosecutor (SPP) was appointed for the case. However, he was not willing to appear citing various inconveniences. Later, VT Raghunath was appointed and he did not appear when the case was heard on January 25, 2022, at Mannarkkad special court.

Later, advocate Rajesh M Menon, who was the additional public prosecutor in the case, took charge as SPP after the victim's family sought a change in prosecutor.
The hearing of the case, which began on April 28, 2022, was completed on March 10, 2023. There were 127 prosecution witnesses in the case. Of the 100 witnesses who were heard during the trial, 24 were declared hostile. Another 24 were removed without being heard. Whereas, two people died.

Ahead of the verdict, Madhu’s family had sought protection from the police. Earlier, the police had offered protection for Lily and Sarasu amid the case trial in 2022.

According to the family, they decided to seek police protection as they have been facing pressure from the relatives of the accused in the wake of the verdict and were finding it difficult even to reach the Mannarkkad special court from Attapadi as part of the trial proceedings.

With PTI inputs