Latest News | Madras HC Rejects John David's

Chennai, Mar 15 (PTI) A Division Bench of the Madras High Court on Tuesday rejected a plea from John David, undergoing life imprisonment for murdering another student Navarasu in 1996, seeking premature release.

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The Bench of Justices P N Prakash and A A Nakkiran, after accepting the submission of State Public Prosecutor Hassan Mohammed Jinnah that a life convict in a cruel death case cannot seek the relief of premature release as a matter of right, dismissed the petition.

Navarasu, then a first year MBBS student of Muthiah Medical College attached to Annamalai University in Chidambaram, was found missing from the hostel on November 6, 1996. The torso of his mutilated body was found on the outskirts of Chidambaram and other parts of the body were found in a suitcase abandoned in a bus a day later.

The prosecution case was that John David, a hostel mate of Navarasu, committed the murder pursuant to a ragging incident.

On March 11,1998, a trial court awarded life imprisonment for David on two counts. The sentence was to run consecutively.

Challenging this, David moved the Madras High Court which on October 5, 2001 ordered his acquittal after giving the benefit of doubt.

The High Court held that the accused John David alone could not have committed the murder. Killing a youth, cutting the body into pieces and removing the head from the torso and transporting them to other places could not have been committed by a single person, the court said.

The State took up the matter to the Supreme Court, which in 2011, reversed the order of the High Court. It had held that the prosecution had established its case on the basis of strong and cogent circumstantial evidence and that on the basis of the circumstances proved, there cannot be any other possible or plausible view favouring the accused.

John David, who was remanded in jail in 2001, moved the Madras High Court again in 2019 for his premature release as per the provisions of Article 161 of the Constitution, which is rejected now.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)