The present controversy over the 2017 Kodanad Estate heist-cum-murder case has now spilled over from the Legislative Assembly to the Madras High Court with a few accused as well as a prosecution witness approaching the court with contradictory requests.
While three accused D. Deepu, M.S. Satheesan and A. Santhosh Samy filed a revision against trial court's refusal to grant permission for examining former Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami, V.K. Sasikala and others, the witness ‘Anubhav’ Ravi alias Ravi insisted on completing trial at the earliest.
Mr. Ravi, a jeweller-cum-realtor based in Coimbatore, told the court that he was also the joint secretary of AIADMK's Amma Peravai in Coimbatore city. He claimed to have got acquainted with prime accused Kanagaraj (since dead) when the latter was a driver to one of his friends Ashok Kumar of Chennai.
Claiming to have been watching a movie at a theatre in Coimbatore on April 28, 2017, the petitioner said that he received a phone call from Kanagaraj on that day stating that he and his friends had robbed the Kodanad Estate, jointly owned by former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa and Ms. Sasikala, a few days ago and ended up murdering the watchman, Om Bahadur.
The petitioner reportedly advised the driver to surrender before the police and later learnt that he had surrendered before Sankagiri Deputy Superintendent of Police. Stating that he had also been introduced to the surviving prime accused K.V.Sayan once but severed the ties, the jeweller said the police had included him as one of the prosecution witnesses in the case.
He recalled that in 2019, the Supreme Court had rejected activist 'Traffic' K.R. Ramaswamy's plea to order a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the heist-cum-murder. Subsequently, the High Court had on multiple occasions ordered completion of the trial within three months.
Yet, the matter was prolonged and now the prosecution had decided to conduct further investigation in the case, he complained. He urged the court to stay further investigation in the case and issue a consequent direction to the trial court to conduct the proceedings on a day-to-day basis.
On the other hand, in their revision petition, the three accused urged the High Court to set aside an order passed by the Nilgiris Sessions Court on April 30 and consequently permit them to examine Mr. Palaniswami, Ms. Sasikala, J. Elavarasi, V.N. Sudhakaran and a few others.
