The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the Tamil Nadu police to further investigate the 2017 Kodanad heist and murder case, by refusing to entertain a plea seeking a stay on further probe. After hearing arguments, the court said that “we cannot interfere” and that “ultimately, the truth has to come out”. It then dismissed the plea, which was filed by AIADMK member and prosecution witness Anubhav Ravi. In the plea, Ravi said that he was being “threatened to submit a favourable witness statement” and also asked why there was a need for further investigation as a chargesheet in the case had already been submitted and he had already been examined.
The court’s permitting further probe in the case comes as a blow to former Chief Minister EPS. Let’s examine why
This is a four-year-old case riddled with several plot twists and turns. On April 24, 2017, a gang of 11 people allegedly led by C Kanagaraj, who was a driver of former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, broke into her Nilgiris residence and murdered a security guard Om Bahadur. The group is said to have conspired to break-in and they believed that around Rs 200 crores of cash had been stashed away in the house. They even locked up two of the security guards before entering the building. However, they could not find any money but only managed to steal several watches and a crystal rhino worth Rs 42,000.
But it was after the burglary that mysterious deaths began plaguing the case. Days after the heist, Kanagaraj, who was the main accused, died in a car accident in Attur. Later KV Sayan, another accused who hails from Kerala met with a serious accident, which killed his wife and child. Months later, on July 3, the computer operator from the Kodanad estate, 29-year-old Dinesh Kumar was found dead at his residence in Kotagiri. This was the fourth such mysterious death and the police closed it as death by suicide.
During the trial in the Nilgiris sessions court, it was revealed that there were glaring lapses in how the case was investigated. A deposition by Balasundaram, the investigation officer and then inspector of Kotagiri police station revealed that photos and videos of the crime scene were not taken, an inventory of the valuables at the estate were not taken, and police officials failed to probe the accidents involving the two accused. Further the sole eye-witness in the case Krishna Thapa’s signature was not taken in the FIR and he was allowed to return to Nepal, even as the police remain clueless about his current whereabouts. Krishna Thapa is one of the security guards who was locked up by the gang.
However, four years later, the case has taken political overtones. In April 2021, three of the accused in the case submitted a revision petition in the Nilgiris Sessions court hearing the case asking for the “real culprit” who had escaped due to “lethargic investigation” to be brought out.
Deepu, MS Satheesan, and A Samthosh Samy, three of the seven accused, petitioned the trial court to interrogate EPS, VK Sasikala (Jayalalitaa’s former aide), her nephew VN Sudhakaran, then Nilgiris collector and district police chief and two staff members of the Kodanad Estate.
When the DMK came into power in Tamil Nadu, former Chief Minister EPS alleged that the new government was politicising the issue and trying to foist a false case on him. EPS also alleged that the DMK government had taken a secret statement from Sayan in order to frame him. EPS was the Chief Minister when the heist took place in 2017.
Sayan finally got a bail with a new government in Tamil Nadu. And in August 2021, the Tamil Nadu police filed a memo in the Nilgiris sessions court informing the court that it was undertaking further investigations in the case, as it had gathered new evidence. The police also summoned Sayan to verify this information.
On August 27, 2021, rejecting a petition seeking a stay on probe by Anubhav Ravi, the Madras High Court allowed further investigations in the case by the Tamil Nadu police.