By IANS,
New Delhi : The Supreme Court Monday confirmed the death sentence awarded to three AIADMK activists for causing the death of three women students of an agricultural university in a bus burning incident near Dharampuri in Tamil Nadu in February 2000.
The three girls were burnt alive and several others sustained burn injuries when the college bus they were travelling in was set on fire by AIADMK activists protesting party chief J. Jayalalithaa’s conviction in the Kodaikanal Pleasant Stay Hotel unauthorised construction case.
The apex court bench of Justice P. Sathasivam and Justice B.S. Chauhan held that the killing of the three women fell in the “rarest of the rare” category, and said that sprinkling kerosene on the bus, knowing well that the students inside would not be able to escape, was nothing but a premeditated act.
The court noted that the protesters did not even heed to the pleadings of the teachers travelling in the bus with the girl students.
Writing the judgment for the bench, Justice Chauhan said that act of the perpetrators of the crime was “inhuman and barbaric”. The judgment also slammed the general public and the police present on the spot for doing nothing to save the girls.
The judgment said that if police had acted in discharge of their duty, perhaps the precious lives could have been saved.
The three convicted are C. Muniappan, Madhu alias Ravindran and Nedu alias Nedunchezhian.
A Chennai court had in February 2000 convicted and sentenced Jayalalithaa and four others to one-year jail term each for legalising the unauthorised construction of the seven-storeyed Pleasant Stay Hotel at Kodaikanal when she was the chief minister 1991-96.