Four more witnesses in the Madhu lynching case retracted their original statement during the ongoing trial at the Special Court for SC/ST (PoA) Act, Mannarkkad on Thursday.
Witnesses 32 (Manaf), 33 (Ranjith), 34 (Manikandan) and 35 (Anoop) turned hostile as they testified before special court judge K.M. Ratheesh Kumar on Thursday. So far, 20 witnesses have turned hostile in the case.
However, the trial continued to evoke more public interest with the court coming forward to retry Sunil Kumar, witness 29 who turned hostile. Sunil Kumar had originally testified in the chargesheet that he had seen the accused bringing Madhu and taking his video, shouting ‘thief, thief’. However, he retracted his testimony on direct examination in the court on Wednesday. The prosecution sought to produce the video footage of the incident. Sunil Kumar was also seen watching the incident in the video.
Statement changed
But when he told the court that he could not see anything as he had vision impairment, the court sent him for eye examination to a government hospital at Palakkad. In the examination, he was found to have clear vision. The court tried him again on Thursday by showing him the same visuals. He changed his statement and said that the person in the video could be someone like him.
Special Public Prosecutor Rajesh M. Menon, meanwhile, appealed to the court for action against Sunil Kumar for perjury. “He (Sunil Kumar) gave false evidence before the court by pretending to have blurred vision. He should be punished for perjury,” said Mr. Menon. The court will consider the plea for action against the witness on Friday.
Sacked from post
The Forest department on Wednesday had sacked Sunil Kumar from his post of temporary forest watcher. Two other temporary forest watchers too had been sacked after they turned hostile in the same case.
It was on February 22, 2018, that Madhu, 27, from Kadukumanna tribal hamlet, near Mukkali, in Attappady was captured, tied, and beaten up by a group of men on charges of theft. They handed him over to the police, but Madhu died on the way to hospital. The cause of the death was found to be internal injuries that he suffered from the beating.
There are 16 accused and 122 witnesses in the case. The case was delayed as none was willing to take up the prosecutor’s role. Following the High Court’s intervention, the Special Court for SC/ST (PoA) Act, Mannarkkad, began the trial on June 8, 2022. But the trial saw witnesses turning hostile one by one.
