CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has directed the Special Court for SC/ST Cases in Dharmapuri to expedite completion of the trial of the ‘Vachathi riot and rape case’, pending for over 19 years, within a month. Justice KN Basha gave the direction while dismissing a revision petition from M Ramamoorthi and six others who wanted to include some more officials as accused in the case. Holding that the revision was filed only with a view to protracting and prolonging the trial proceedings, the judge dismissed the petition and imposed a cost of Rs. 10,000 on each of the petitioners. The cost amount should be given to the Little Flower Convent Higher Secondary School for the Deaf in Chennai, within two weeks, the judge added.The accused, numbering 269, were all officials of police, forest and revenue departments. The charge against them was that they had entered the Vachathi village in Dharmapuri district on June 20, 1992 under the pretext of recovering smuggled sandalwood. They, however, ransacked the properties of the villagers, illegally detained the womenfolk and children and committed the heinous crime of rape. A case had been registered for various offences of the IPC and SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.After completion of all formalities and when the case reached the stage of cross examination of the witnesses in February last year, the petitioners filed revision petitions to include the then RDO (Deivasigamani), the then SP (Ramanujam) and the then DC (Dasarathan). The trial judge, however, rejected the plea. Hence, the present revision petition in the HC. The Special Public Prosecutor for CBI, N Chandrasekaran, submitted that there was absolutely no ground for impleading the three former officials as accused in the case. Dismissing the petitions, Justice Basha observed that the petitions had been filed without an iota of evidence or materials on record.
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