The Madras High Court on Wednesday dismissed a State appeal preferred against the acquittal of four jail warders and a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) sympathiser from a case booked against them way back in 1995 in connection with the sensational escape of nine LTTE members from Chennai Central Prison.

Justice M. Dhandapani dismissed the appeal and confirmed the acquittal of two accused alone because the rest had died pending adjudication of the appeal filed in 2003. The judge agreed with advocate V. Elangovan, representing LTTE sympathiser Kumar alias Thali Kumar, that there were no materials to reverse the acquittal.

According to the prosecution case, LTTE members A. Sathish alias Romeo, S. Kutty alias Menon, R. Pratap alias Logendar, S. Balan alias Baleswaran, V. Balendran alias Baleswaran, V. Vicky alias Vignaraja, S. Rajkumar A. Pammi alias Aravindan and Shamnugam alias Maistry from Jaffna in Sri Lanka had been detained in Chennai.

All of them were booked under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act of 1987. They had reportedly entered a criminal conspiracy along with a group of jail warders and their sympathisers and escaped from the prison on February 27, 1995 using a duplicate key and after scaling the compound wall with the help of bed spreads.

The Q branch police investigated the case related to the escape and booked a case against as many as 16 individuals, including the nine LTTE members. However, the police could manage to catch only two of the LTTE members S. Balan and V. Balendran who admitted their guilt before the trial court in 1996 and underwent 14 months of rigorous imprisonment.

Two commit suicide

After completing the sentence, Balendran flew to Sri Lanaka with State government’s permission. In so far as the other LTTE members were concerned, five remain absconding till date and two, Kutty and Shanmugam, committed suicide by consuming cyanide capsules that were reportedly handed over to them in the prison by Kumar.

Finding that the case had been booked only against employees in the lower cadre of warders and not against any of the higher officials, Mr. Justice Dhandapani said, it was unfair to blame the warders alone for the crime. He also said that the prosecution had failed to submit cogent materials to prove the guilt of the surviving accused.