The Madurai bench of the Madras High Court reserved verdict in a case seeking re-postmortem of a farmer in Tenkasi who died in the custody of state forest department personnel.
The court, on Wednesday, was hearing a petition filed by the farmer Anaikkarai Muthu’s wife Balammal, in which she had sought a court order for conducting an autopsy again on her husband’s body. In her petition, she had also requested that the autopsy be conducted by senior doctors and that the officers responsible for her husband’s death be booked for murder. She had also requested for a CB-CID probe into the death and a compensation for her loss.
The case came up for hearing in front of Justice R Pongiappan. During the hearing, the state government submitted that the autopsy was conducted after informing the Ambasamudram magistrate, based on the request of the District Collector.
While the court informed that as per the autopsy report, Muthu’s body had injury marks only in four places, the counsel of the petitioner stated that as per the report of the judicial magistrate, Muthu’s body had injury marks in 18 spots. The court noted the submissions and reserved the verdict in the case for Thursday.
Muthu, 70, a farmer in Vagaikulam near Tenkasi, was taken away by the Forest Department personnel on July 22 on charges of erecting an electric fence around his farm. The department officers who took him away also allegedly accused him of drawing power illegally. Within hours of having been taken away by the department Muthu developed chest pain and was taken to the Tenkasi Government Hospital, where he died. An inquiry was conducted by Karthikeyan, the judicial magistrate of Ambasamudram.
Meanwhile, Muthu’s family and relatives denied the allegations levelled by the forest department personnel and accused them of beating Muthu in custody.