28 AIADMK men convicted in bus burning case

SALEM: Seven years after the sensational bus burning incident at neighbouring Dharmapuri, in which three young girl students of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University were charred to death, a court on Thursday convicted three AIADMK workers of murder and 25 others of lesser charges. Two other accused were acquitted by court.

The case, which had been dragging in Krishnagiri court, was transferred to the First Additional Sessions Court by the Madras High Court during the AIADMK regime on a petition by the father of one of the victims on the plea that the local AIADMK men were influencing the witnesses to turn hostile.

The trial got further delayed as the then AIADMK Government, headed by Jayalalithaa, did not issue the notification to appoint the high court picked senior advocate M Srinivasan as Special Public Prosecutor for over 15 months.

The AIADMK men, protesting the conviction of Jayalalithaa in Kodaikanal Pleasant Stay hotel case, allegedly set on fire the TNAU bus on February 3, 2000 after intercepting it.

Three girls were charred to death and 18 received burns.

First Additional Sessions Judge D Krishnaraja pronounced Nedu alias Nedunchezhiyan, then secretary of the Dharmapuri town unit of AIADMK, Madhu alias Ravichandran, then town MGR forum functionary, and P Muniappan, a former panchayat president, guilty of murder and attempt to murder and various other charges.

After the three pleaded innocence, the Judge ordered cancellation of their bail and directed the police to take them into custody.

The judge also held 25 other accused guilty of rioting and wrongful confinement among other less severe charges.

S Palanisamy and K Raju were, however, acquitted. There were a total of 31 accused in the case but one of them had died during the trial.

The quantum of sentence would be pronounced tomorrow.

The incident sent shock waves throughout the state. Jayalalithaa's conviction in the pleasant stay hotel case in which the judge said the then Chief Minister had not applied her mind in granting building permission in the Kodaikanal Hill Area.

During the 2001 Assembly polls, the returning officers of Bargur, Andipatti, Bhuvanagiri and Pudukottai constituencies rejected the nomination papers of Jayalalithaa citing her conviction in the pleasant stay and Tansi land deal cases.

But after the polls, Jayalalithaa was sworn in as the chief minister by the then state governor Fathima Beevi, but the Supreme Court disqualified her from being the chief minister.

After the apex court cleared Jayalalithaa of the charges in 2002, she won the bypolls from Andipatti and assumed office as the chief minister once again that year.

The Government prosecutor R Srinivasan demanded capital punishment for the accused, saying it is the rarest of the rare cases.

"If they come out, they will spoil society and spoil government property and there will be no fear on the judiciary," he said.