New Delhi, January 29
The Supreme Court today converted the life sentence of four members of forest brigand Veerappan’s gang into death penalty for killing 22 personnel of a special task force set up to nab him in a land mine blast in April, 1993.
A special TADA court in Mysore had awarded life sentence to Veerappan gang members — Simon, Gnan Prakash, Madhian and Bilavendra — which was sought to be enhanced by the Karnataka Government to capital punishment on the ground that their act was a serious threat to society.
Describing their action of blowing one of two buses carrying the personnel of the joint task force of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in Satyamanglam forest on April 9, 1993 as “diabolically planned”, a Bench of Mr Justice Y.K. Sabharwal and Mr Justice B.N. Agrawal said: “There can hardly be a more appropriate case than this to award maximum sentence.”
“It would be mockery of justice if extreme punishment is not imposed” in such serious crimes posing direct threat to society when officials of law enforcing agencies were eliminated in this manner, the Court ruled, while rejecting the appeals of the accused against their conviction.
“We have to perform onerous duty of self-preservation, that is preservation of persons who are living and working in areas where the accused and their group operate,” the Court said.
Fourteen other persons, including Police Superintendent K. Gopalakrishnan, who was leading the party of 50 personnel to launch an operation against Veerappan, were seriously injured in the blast.
The Court rejected the plea of the accused that they had acted under duress and pressure of Veerappan and were compelled to act like this, saying that there was no evidence to prove that they had joined the gang under compulsion.
“It is evident that the crime was diabolically planned. The accused are threat and grave danger to society,” the Court said.
