Madhurai - HC con­firms death to man for mur­der­ing wit­ness

The Hindu (Madurai)

The Hindu Bur­eau

30 Nov 2025

The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Fri­day con­firmed the death sen­tence awar­ded to a man by the trial court in Tirunelveli for the murder of a wit­ness in an attempt-to-murder case in which the man was an accused.

The court was hear­ing the referred trial seek­ing con­firm­a­tion of the judg­ment of con­vic­tion and death sen­tence awar­ded to R. Selva­raj by the Second Addi­tional Ses­sions Court in Tirunelveli.

The court was also hear­ing the appeal filed by Selva­raj and his fam­ily mem­bers Ant­ony Raj, Arul Philip Raj, Anto Nal­laiah and Babu Alex­an­der who were awar­ded life sen­tences and Jac­queline, Rajan and Sel­valeela who were awar­ded two months of impris­on­ment.

The case of the pro­sec­u­tion was that there was polit­ical rivalry between the accused per­sons and R. Vaikun­dam since he tendered evid­ence against the accused per­sons in an attempt-to murder case. They threatened him not to depose against them. He did not heed to their threat and test­i­fied his exam­in­a­tion in chief against the accused per­sons before the trial court. The case was pos­ted for cross exam­in­a­tion. Enraged, the accused per­sons murdered him in 2022 on the banks of canal.

A Divi­sion Bench of Justices P. Velmur­ugan and L. Vic­toria Gowri observed that due to polit­ical rivalry there was enmity between both the groups. The crime was com­mit­ted in order to pre­vent the wit­ness from giv­ing evid­ence against the accused per­sons on the day of cross exam­in­a­tion.

The pur­pose for which the wit­ness was bru­tally murdered that too on the date of hear­ing prior to going to the court for ten­der­ing evid­ence was shock­ing. If this situ­ation was allowed to pre­vail no wit­nesses would come for­ward to give evid­ence out of fear, the court observed.

The court observed that by mur­der­ing the wit­ness, the appel­lants had instilled ter­ror in the minds of the remain­ing wit­nesses. The Wit­ness Pro­tec­tion Scheme was estab­lished in 2018. The main object­ive was to pro­tect the wit­ness. From a care­ful ana­lysis of the aggrav­at­ing and the mit­ig­at­ing cir­cum­stances, the court con­cluded that the case falls within the cat­egory of ‘the rarest of rare cases’ war­rant­ing impos­i­tion of death sen­tence on the main accused.

If such acts of the accused are not pun­ished by giv­ing major pun­ish­ment of death sen­tence, in future, in every case, no one will come for­ward to stand as wit­ness and the very object­ive and pur­pose of the Wit­ness Pro­tec­tion Scheme 2018, will be defeated, the court observed while con­firm­ing the death sen­tence imposed by the trial court. The crim­inal appeals were dis­missed.

Source: Hindu: https://www.pressreader.com/india/the-hindu-madurai-9WWB/20251130/281586656900940