In a major setback to former Tamil Nadu chief minister and AIADMK joint coordinator Edappadi K. Palaniswami the Madras High Court on Friday ruled that the Nilgiris police can go ahead with further investigation in the Kodanad Estate break-in, burglary and murder case. Justice M. Nirmal Kumar of Madras High Court allowed further investigation in the case after dismissing a petition filed by a prosecution witness seeking a stay on a further probe into the 2017 case.
The petition filed by an AIADMK functionary Ravi aka Anubhav Ravi was dismissed by Justice Nirmal Kumar, saying that he has no locus stand in the case and he was only a witness. “The police can continue with further investigation in the case,” the judge ordered. Ravi, a member of the AIADMK from Nilgiris, had filed a petition seeking stay in further investigation in the case and issue a direction to the Ooty sessions court in Nilgiris district to conduct the trial on a day-to-day basis.
At a time when Palaniswami has been crying foul saying that the DMK government and chief minister MK Stalin are trying to “frame” him in the case, the court allowing further investigation has put him in a soup. The AIADMK had boycotted the assembly and even called on Governor Banwarilal Purohit saying the government is trying to implicate Palaniswami in the case. The case is under trial in the Ooty sessions court.
Earlier in a new twist to the Kodanad heist case, three of the 10 accused knocked the doors of the Madras HC seeking direction to examine Palaniswami and former AIADMK general secretary V.K. Sasikala. In a criminal revision petition filed under section 233 of CrPc, three of the 10 accused - Deepu, Satheesan and Santhosh Samy sought the court to examine Palaniswami, Sasikala, Jayalalithaa’s estranged foster son V.N. Sudhkaran, former Nilgiris collector Shankar IAS, former Nilgiris district Superintendent of Police Murali Rambha, Sajeevan, state organiser of AIADMK commercial wing, Gudalur, Natarajan, manager of Kodanad estate and Sunil, employee of Sajeevan. In the petition, the three said that out of the 103 witnesses, only 41 were examined. The petition also said that the sessions judge erred in rushing up the proceedings of the case while the investigation officer had intentionally left out to record the statements of material witnesses.
In the intervening night on 23-23 April 2017, 10 masked men broke into the high-profile bungalow of former chief minister J. Jayalalithaa. After breaking in, they killed a security guard— Om Bahadur—and attacked another security guard Krishna Bahadur and fled the place. Later, just four days after the burglary, prime accused in the case, Kanagaraj, died in a road accident in Salem-Chennai highway and another accused K.V. Sayan suffered grievous injuries in a road accident at Palakkad in Kerala while his wife and daughter died. Sayan who was in prison was let out on bail from the Coimbatore prison in July 2021, after which he sought further investigation in the case. Sayan, in his deposition, had said that Kanagaraj devised the plot for the burglary on instructions from his higher ups.
Meanwhile, former AIADMK MP V. Maithreyan in a Facebook post had asked Chief Minister M.K. Stalin to speed up the probe into mystery behind Jayalalithaa’s death. He said the DMK government has to get the stay, in the Supreme Court, vacated and allow Justice Arumuhgaswamy to give his report in the Jayalalithaa death probe case.
