A Madurai court on Monday, April 6, sentenced nine police personnel to death for the custodial torture and murder of trader P. Jayaraj and his son J. Benniks, who died in June 2020 after being detained at the Sathankulam police station in Thoothukudi district. The trial lasted more than five years and examined over 100 witnesses.
Judge G. Muthukumaran of the First Additional District and Sessions Court had on March 23 convicted all nine accused under multiple sections of the Indian Penal Code, including Section 302 (murder), along with charges of fabricating evidence and filing false cases. Pronouncing the death sentence on April 6, he called it a “rarest of rare” case and a gross abuse of authority. “Father and son stripped, ruthlessly assaulted... Heart shudders reading about it,” he said from the bench.
Those sentenced to death are Inspector S. Sridhar, Sub-Inspectors P. Raghu Ganesh and K. Balakrishnan, Head Constables S. Murugan and A. Saamidurai, and Constables M. Muthuraj, S. Chelladurai, X. Thomas Francis, and S. Veilumuthu. A tenth accused, Special Sub-Inspector Pauldurai, died before the verdict after contracting COVID-19.
Jayaraj, around 58, and Benniks, 31, ran a mobile phone shop in Sathankulam. On June 19, 2020, police picked them up for allegedly keeping the shop open beyond permitted hours during the COVID-19 lockdown, a charge that did not hold up. The trouble had started over a verbal exchange between Jayaraj and the police about when the shop should close. Jayaraj had come to the station on his own after being summoned. Family members alleged that both men were beaten through the night, with batons used to inflict injuries that proved fatal. They were remanded to judicial custody at Kovilpatti sub-jail, nearly 80 kilometres from Sathankulam, in the early hours of June 20, even though a sub-jail existed in Sathankulam itself. Benniks died on June 22 and Jayaraj the following morning, both at Kovilpatti Government Hospital.
The victims belonged to the Nadar Christian community. The Evangelical Fellowship of India, in a statement issued days after the deaths, pointed out that the same police station had assaulted seven Christian pastors in February 2020. In that incident, Sub-Inspector Raghu Ganesh and Head Constable Murugan had beaten the pastors with batons, leaving them with injuries to their legs and backbone. Both men figure among those now awarded the death penalty.
Upon arrival at Kovilpatti sub-jail, prison staff recorded the injuries on the two men in the logbook, unwilling to take the escorting officers’ account at face value. The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court took suo motu cognisance on June 25, 2020, and directed the Thoothukudi District Collector to send revenue officers to take charge of the Sathankulam police station to preserve evidence. A judicial inquiry established that CCTV footage from the night in question had been deleted, though investigators later recovered the hard disk. The probe moved from the state CB-CID to the Central Bureau of Investigation, which produced a 2,000-page charge sheet drawing on forensic evidence, medical reports, and witness testimony. A woman constable from the station told investigators that the two men had been assaulted through the night and that blood stains were found on tables and lathis.
The court found Inspector Sridhar to have instigated the assault, with the other personnel held culpable for participating in the violence. “If ordinary citizens had committed the same crime, ordinary punishment could have been given, but the police themselves have committed the crime,” Judge Muthukumaran said while passing the order. He also noted that but for the continuous monitoring by the Madras High Court, “the truth would have been buried.”
Jayaraj’s daughter Persis, who fought the case in court alongside her mother through six years, told the media after the verdict, “It was a heinous crime committed with brazen authority.” The convicted officers retain the right to appeal, and the case now goes to the High Court for mandatory confirmation of the death sentences.
