Life sentence for ragging murder

The Judge said, if the accused failed to pay the fine, he would have to further undergo 21 months’ of RI.

That the punishments would be undergone “consecutively” and not “concurrently” is considered a significant judgment in legal circles. Before delivering the judgment, Justice Singaravelu asked David if he wanted to say anything. David burst into tears and claimed he wasinnocent. However, he expressed his readiness to accept the verdict. His parents were also present.

Special Public Prosecutor M S Kandasamy argued that no leniency should be shown as the crime was heinous and diabolic. He added, as David was 19 years and four months old at the time of the well-planned murder, there should not be any mitigation of the sentence on grounds of age. According to the judgment, “Although it was primitive and gruesome in nature, due consideration was given for this unfortunate youth who had not only entangled himself in this heinous crime due to his egoism but also made his parents undergo eternal agony.”

Significantly, there were no direct evidences for the offenses. There were no eye witnesses either. But the proof was available by linking the chains of circumstantial evidences, says the judgment. The murder was described as “hair-raising to the entire society, extremely brutal and diabolic”.

Seventy-eight witnesses were cross-examined in the case and 120 documents wereused for corroborative evidence for the judgment that had 143 pages. The case proceedings began on September 1, 1997 and came to an end last Wednesday.

The victim, son of former Madras University Vice-Chancellor Dr P K Ponnusamy and a first-year student of the Rajah Muthiah Medical College in Annamalai University, was murdered on November 6, 1996. John David, who indulged in ragging in the hostel campus, was angered over the fresher, Navarasu, for not obliging him and assaulted him in his hostel room. When Navarasu fell unconscious, David decapitated him and severed his limbs. He dumped the head, packed in a rexine bag, in a slushy pond located in the University campus.

He packed the torso and the limbs in suitcases and boarded a train to Chennai. He disposed off the limbs near a river bed and the suitcase containing the torso in a city bus in Chennai. Prof Ponnusamy filed a complaint with the Annamalai Nagar police on November 10. Meanwhile, on November 7, a male torso was found in a sack abandoned in atown bus on route No 21-G. Even as a hunt was on for the killer, David surrendered in Rajamannarkudi magistrate court on November 11 and the court permitted his interrogation in custody. On November 18, David made a confessional statement and later took the policemen to places where he had disposed of parts of Navarasu’s body.

The Government of Tamil Nadu clamped a ban on ragging in educational institutions and passed a special enactment providing imprisonment to those who indulged in ragging and also for institution heads who failed to act on ragging complaints.

AWARDS RECOMMENDED: Police officials and constables who investigated the case have been recommended for the Chief Minister’s award, district Superintendent of Police C Shailendra Babu said on Wednesday.