The overhead water tank at Vengaivayal village in Pudukkottai district wherein human faeces were found floating in 2022.
| Photo Credit: M. MOORTHY
The Crime Branch-Criminal Investigation Department (CB-CID) on Friday informed the Madras High Court of having solved the 2022 Vengaivayal human faeces in overhead water tank case. It said a charge sheet was also filed against three individuals before a special court for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act cases in Pudukkottai on January 20, 2025.
Appearing before the First Division Bench of Chief Justice K.R. Shriram and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy, Additional Advocate-General J. Ravindran said the charge sheet had been filed against J. Muraliraja, 33, B. Sudharshan, 21, and K. Muthukrishnan, 23, under Sections 277 (defiling water), 427 (committing mischief), and 201 (destroying evidence), read with Section 109 (abetment), of the Indian Penal Code.
The submission was made at the hearing of two public interest litigation petitions filed by lawyers K. Rajkamal and Marx Raveendran alias V. Raveendran. They had filed the petitions in 2023 seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the incident. Advocate G.S. Mani, representing the second petitioner, told the court that the real culprits do not appear to have been named in the final report filed by the CB-CID.
Wondering why the CB-CID had not invoked the SC/ST Act against the three individuals and why it had not disclosed the community to which they belonged, counsel feared that the investigators were attempting to project it rather as a case of enmity between the three individuals and the husband of a local panchayat president than as a case of atrocity committed against the Scheduled Caste residents.
However, when the Chief Justice pointed out that the High Court, while dealing with public interest litigation petitions, could not micro-manage the criminal proceedings and that a protest petition could be filed before the special court if anyone was aggrieved by the charge sheet, Mr. Mani sought time to file a detailed reply to an affidavit filed by the investigating officer attached to the CB-CID.
The judges accepted his request and adjourned the PIL petitions for further hearing to March 27, 2025. Earlier, the AAG told the court that it was in December 2022 that the human faeces were found floating in the overhead water tank built by the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage (TWAD) Board, under the Cauvery Combined Water Supply Scheme, at Vengaivayal hamlet in the Kulathur taluk of Pudukkottai district.
R. Kanagaraj, a local resident, lodged a complaint with the Vellanur police about a few children in the hamlet having fallen ill after consuming the defiled water from the overhead tank. He also claimed that some youngsters from the village had climbed up and spotted human faeces floating in the tank. Photographs shot by those youngsters were circulated widely in the social media.
Immediately, a First Information Report was registered against unknown individuals under Sections 277 and 328 (poisoning) as well as a few provisions of the SC/ST Act on December 26, 2022. A fortnight later, the Director-General of Police/Head of Police Force transferred the investigation from the local police to the CB-CID on January 14, 2023, considering the sensitiveness of the issue.
The investigating agency formed special teams with four inspectors, five sub-inspectors, and 16 others to examine 397 witnesses and analyse 196 mobile phone numbers. The probe conducted in the last two years revealed that Muttukadu panchayat president M. Padma had terminated the service of overhead tank operator Shanmugam who enjoyed the support of the Vengaivayal residents.
The residents requested Ms. Padma’s husband Muthaiya to retain Shanmugam in service but their request was not heeded to and hence there was discontent. Further, the villagers were dissatisfied with the water tank not having been cleaned for long. It led to an altercation between the first accused Muraliraja’s father Jeevanantham and Mr. Muthaiya during the grama sabha meeting on October 2, 2022.
“Considering the prevailing motive with Tr. Muthaiya and to take revenge on him, Tr. Muraliraja on December 26, 2022 falsely claimed that the water supplied from the overhead tank was turbid with bad odour and he along with two of the villagers Tr. Muthukrishnan and Tr. Sudharsan climbed up the water tank and committed the offence,” read a status report filed by the CB-CID before the High Court.
The investigating agency claimed to have arrived at the conclusion after a thorough analysis of the photos and videos deleted (but recovered by the police) from the mobile phones of the accused and also on the basis of reports of the Tamil Nadu Forensic Sciences Laboratory, the DNA report, chemical analysis reports, voice test reports, and the medical reports of children treated by doctors.
Published – January 24, 2025 10:25 pm IST
