The Madras High Court is slated to deliver on Monday its verdict on appeals preferred by six death convicts, one life convict and another convict imprisoned for five years in the 2016 Udumalpet Shankar murder case.
A Division Bench comprising Justices M. Sathyanarayanan and M. Nirmal Kumar would also pronounce their judgement on appeals preferred by the State challenging the acquittal of three other accused from the case.
The judges had reserved their judgement on the batch of cases in February this year, after hearing marathon arguments advanced by the counsel over a span of one year, since it involved as many as six convicts on death row.
V. Shankar, a final year mechanical engineering student belonging to a Scheduled Caste, was hacked to death by an armed gang on March 13, 2016, for having married his collegemate C. Kowsalya, belonging to Thevar (Other Backward Class) community.
The crime was committed reportedly at the behest of the woman’s father B. Chinnasamy, mother C. Annalakshmi and maternal uncle P. Pandidurai who had hired contract killers to commit the honour killing, which shook the State at that point of time.
After a full-fledged trial, the Principal District and Sessions Court in Tiruppur had acquitted the woman’s mother, maternal uncle and one of the alleged hitmen, V. Prasanna alias Prasannakumar, from all charges on December 12, 2017.
The trial court, however, awarded death sentence to as many as six convicts including the woman’s father, his friend P. Jagatheesan and other assailants M. Manikandan, P. Selvakumar, P. Kalaithamilvaanan alias Tamil alias Kalai and M. Mathan alias Michael.
Two other members of the gang K. Dhanraj alias Tamil alias Stephen Dhanraj and M. Manikandan were ordered to undergo imprisonment for life and five years respectively.
