RAMANATHAPURAM
A Judicial Magistrate Court here on Monday convicted an Inspector of Police on a charge of assaulting a suspect to extort confession and awarded him one year simple imprisonment.
Holding that the prosecution had proved the case, Judicial Magistrate II G. Isakiappan, in-charge of JM I Court, also imposed a fine of ₹10,000 on K. Kannan (50), Inspector of Police, presently attached to Kadathur police station in Dharmapuri district.
The magistrate held Kannan guilty under Section 330 (voluntarily causing hurt to extort confession) of the IPC in the case in which the first information report was registered in 2009. Though the section attracted up to seven years of imprisonment, he was awarding only one year of jail, considering the age of the accused and the fact that he had been running around, facing the case for more than eight years.
The Magistrate said the accused should serve one more month of imprisonment if he failed to pay the fine, but Kannan, who was present in the court, paid the fine amount. He was released on bail to file an appeal against the verdict.
The prosecution case was that Kannan, while serving at Nainarkoil police station in the district, detained one T. Ganesan (45) of Melmangalam in December 2005, in connection with a jewel theft case and beat him up to get confession statement.
While Ganesan had been detained at the station, Jayarani, the complainant in the jewel theft case, reported that the jewel was found near the back door of her house. After Ganesan moved the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court seeking action against the Inspector, Arumugasamy, then Paramakudi DSP, enquired into the incident and submitted a report stating that Kannan had committed an offence under Section 330 of the IPC, after which the FIR was registered against him.
The case was initially tried in a Paramakudi court before it was transferred to the district court here.
