‘The wheels of justice may grind slow but they grind fine,’ goes a saying. None but P. Manikandan of Melpalanandal village in Tiruvannamalai district may know it better, for the Madras High Court had in 2018 set aside the conviction and death sentence imposed on him for murdering a four-year-old girl child. After five years, he is facing a trial once again for the same offence because of a de novo (fresh) probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
It was on June 13, 2013 that P. Pachiammal, a kindergarten student, went missing from Gandhi International Matriculation School at Mangalam village in Tiruvannamalai. Her parents, Paramasivam and P. Usha, went on a frantic search but in vain. They were told by school administrator Sakthi as well as their nephew Yogesh (name changed), then studying in Class III in the same school, that it was Manikandan who took Pachiammal with him.
However, Manikandan, a friend of Paramasivam, denied having picked up the child from school and joined the family in searching for her. Initially, the Mangalam police booked a child missing case on the basis of the complaint filed by her father. After six days, the villagers found the decomposed body of the child in a well at Reddiar Thoppu. Immediately, the charge in the First Information Report (FIR) was altered to Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code.
The post-mortem report revealed that the child had been smothered before her body was thrown into the well and the police investigation concluded that it was Manikandan who had kidnapped the girl from the school with the intention of demanding a ransom from her father but ended up killing her fearing trouble. The police also came to know that there was a monetary dispute between the accused and the victim’s father.
Manikandan had taken a loan of ₹5 lakh from Paramasivam for starting a business but ended up losing all the money. When he demanded ₹80,000 more, he was snubbed by the family and therefore he kidnapped the child and killed her, the prosecution claimed. A Sessions Court in Tiruvannamalai accepted the prosecution’s case after a full-fledged trial and awarded the death sentence to the convict on March 31, 2018.
The judgment was referred to the Madras High Court for confirmation as required under Section 366 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Simultaneously, Manikandan filed an appeal before the High Court challenging his conviction as well as the death sentence. A Division Bench of Justices S. Ramathilagam and S. Vimala heard the referred trial as well as the appeal together.
On July 24, 2018, the Bench acquitted Manikandan of all charges levelled against him since there were grave infirmities in the investigation conducted by the Mangalam police as well as in the appreciation of evidence by the trial court. Further, the Bench ordered a de novo investigation by the CBI which probed the matter afresh and filed a charge sheet in 2021 pressing the charge of murder once again against Manikandan.
After the commencement of the second trial, the accused approached the High Court claiming that he could not be prosecuted once again for a charge from which he had already been acquitted. On July 4, 2023, Justice G. Jayachandran of the High Court dismissed his plea to quash the CBI’s final report with an observation that “an acquittal in previous trial with a direction for re-investigation is not an acquittal in force.”
The judge pointed out that the accused had not challenged the Division Bench’s order for a de novo investigation. He had, in fact, submitted himself to the second trial too and only after “finding that the wind of trial was against him”, had he come up with the plea to quash the CBI’s final report in order to “put spokes in the judicial process”, Justice Jayachandran remarked.
The High Court’s refusal to quash the final report was taken on appeal before the Supreme Court which, on October 17 this year, stayed the trial proceedings till January 2, 2024 and ordered notice, returnable by then, to the CBI as well as the State of Tamil Nadu. Now, the final orders to be passed by the Supreme Court would decide whether Manikandan’s claim of double jeopardy would hold water or not.
