Gokulraj Murder: Madras High Court upholds conviction of 10 convicts

The Madras High Court Friday upheld the conviction and the sentence imposed by the trial court on the 10 upper caste men for having killed 23-year-old Dalit engineering student, Gokulraj on the suspicion that he was in a relationship with a woman belonging to their caste.

A bench of Justices MS Ramesh and N Anand Venkatesh dismissed the appeals preferred by the convicts, including S Yuvaraj, the prime accused and leader of a local dominant caste outfit, challenging their conviction and life sentence imposed by a trial court in 2015. The bench however, altered the sentence imposed upon two of the ten convicts and reduced their life terms to five years imprisonment.

Yuvaraj, leader of the local dominant caste group 'Maaveeran Dheeran Chinnamalai Gounder Peravai,' was the prime accused in the case.

On Friday, the High Court said the prosecution was able to successfully establish the chain of events and prove its case.

The bench said it found no perversity in the trial court's judgement convicting the accused.

To arrive at such conclusion, the High Court said, it examined nine points, including the chain of events, Gokulraj's visit to temple with Swathi, the woman he was allegedly in a relationship with, Gokulraj's severed torso being recovered, the fact that Gokulraj's death was homicidal, the motive behind the crime, the last seen theory, Yuvaraj's conduct after the incident, and scientific evidence produced in the case.

All evidence was examined meticulously and the Court has not been swayed by media reports or public sentiments, the judgment said.

"We remained conscious of the fact that moral conviction has no place in criminal jurisprudence," the bench said.

The Court also issued a word of caution to litigants and trial courts saying that no one can be permitted to make a mockery of the law by allowing prime witnesses to turn hostile.

It also said it had issued a slew of directions and a standard procedure that was to be followed henceforth, in all cases where the prosecution cases hinge upon CCTV footage and such electronic evidence.

Gokulraj, an engineering student, went missing on June 23, 2015. He was last seen along with a woman friend at the Arthanareeswarar temple at Tiruchengode. Later, his headless body was found by the railway track in Tamil Nadu's Namakkal district.

The case was initially considered a suspicious death but was later changed to murder after the postmortem showed that the victim was strangled.

It was later proved in court that Gokulraj had been killed as he was a Dalit, and the woman he was allegedly in a relationship with, belonged to the dominant 'Gounder' community.

The assailants had also forced Gokulraj to pen down a suicide note besides recording a video of him claiming to have decided to commit suicide because of love failure.

In March last year, a Special Sessions Court in Madurai had sentenced ten persons, including the prime accused V Yuvaraj, leader of a local dominant caste group, Maaveeran Dheeran Chinnamalai Gounder Peravai, to life imprisonment in the case.

On December 1 last year, the High Court bench had initiated suo motu contempt proceedings against Swathi, the woman Gokulraj had been in the alleged relationship with after she refused to identify herself in a CCTV footage in which she could be seen walking with Gokulraj hours before his death.

In their appeal, the convicts had claimed the police had framed them in the case. They had pointed out that there was no eye witness to the crime and that the entire case was based on circumstantial evidence.

The prosecution however, argued there was adequate evidence against the convicts and that the case was not one of honour killing, but that it was a "caste bigotry murder." 

Senior Counsel Gopalakrishna Lakshmana Raju, and advocates A Ramesh and Ashok Kumar appeared for the convicts.

Senior Counsel T Lajapathi Roy appeared for Gokulraj's mother Chithra.

Additional Public Prosecutor A Thiruvadi Kumar and former special public prosecutor Bhavani B Mohan appeared for the State.