VK Sasikala and Edappadi K. Palaniswami. File | Photo credit: The Hindu

The Madras High Court on Friday (December 6, 2024) allowed a joint plea filed by three accused in the 2017 Kodanad estate robbery and murder case to summon former chief minister and AIADMK general secretary, Edappadi K. Palaniswami, the aide to former chief minister Jayalalithaa. VK Sasikala and some members of her family and will examine them as defense witnesses before the trial court.

Justice P. Velmurugan allowed the criminal review petition filed by the accused, D. Deepu, MS Satheesan and A. Santhosh Samy, in 2021 against the Nilgiris District Sessions Court’s refusal to summon and examine M .Palaniswami, Ms. Sasikala and seven others in connection with the reported crime at the sprawling tea estate jointly owned by Jayalalithaa and her assistant.

The judge had reserved orders on the criminal review petition on November 15, 2024, after questioning why Mr. Palaniswami should not be summoned and questioned as a witness now, since he was no longer the chief minister of the state. He noted that the sessions court on April 30, 2021, refused to summon and question him, saying that he was the chief minister.

“Mr Palaniswami being the present Chief Minister of the State, the accused cannot misuse the process of law to summon the Chief Minister as a defense witness without any relevance,” the sessions court had observed. However, the petitioners’ lawyer, Roméo Roy Alfred, had insisted that the examination of the nine witnesses was absolutely essential in the case of the robbery and murder.

Besides Mr. Palaniswami and Ms. Sasikala, the three criminal review petitioners before the High Court had insisted on the interrogation of his relatives J. Elavarasi and VN Sudhakaran; former collector Nilgiris P. Shankar; former police commissioner Murali Rambha; Sajeevan, AIADMK state convener; the estate manager Natarajan; and another individual named Sunil.

The main accused in the murder and robbery case, KV Sayan, had also filed a petition to summon an equal number of nine persons, but the only common witness in both the petitions was the estate manager, M. Natarajan. Other witnesses he wanted to question included, among others, a deputy director of the forensic science laboratory and the dean of the Coimbatore Government Medical College Hospital.

The sessions court had passed joint orders on both the petitions on April 30, 2021 and had allowed examination of only three witnesses, including M. Natarajan, deputy director of forensic sciences, S. Raj Mohan, and an engineer deputy of Tamil Nadu Electricity. Board of Directors, Kodanad Division. The request to summon and question all the others was rejected for various reasons.