kaipulla: The Story of Nallakaman - State Terrorism

Madurai Bench confirms conviction of Premkumar

Staff Reporter

MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Tuesday confirmed the conviction of Superintendent of Police K. Premkumar, who is under suspension, and three other policemen for assaulting and humiliating an ex-serviceman in a civil dispute in 1982.
Passing orders on a batch of petitions, Justice A. Selvam sentenced the convicts to one-month simple imprisonment and instructed the trial court to take steps to incarcerate them.
The judge did not agree with the trial court on releasing the convicts under Section 3 (power of courts to release certain offenders after due admonition) of the Probation of Offenders Act.
The Additional Sessions Court here convicted them on July 11, 2003.

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His beginnings were appropriately ominous. When he was only a sub-inspector in Vadipatti in Madurai district he took upon himself the job of evicting a tenant of a fellow policeman. The ex-serviceman tenant, Nallakaman, only wanted the advance of Rs 5,000 he had made returned.

The money was not coming and so Nallakaman decided to dig in his heels. But he had failed to take into account Premkumar’s interest in the case and had to pay for his costly mistake.

On February 1, 1982 Nallakaman, his wife and son were beaten up at the Vadipatti police station by Premkumar and his colleagues. The head of the family was then handcuffed and paraded in the streets and dragged to the Vadipatti bus stand.

To top it all, a criminal case was registered against the hapless Nallakaman on charges, including attempt to murder. Public outcry followed, an RDO inquiry was ordered and the report confirmed all the allegations.

Finally, the Usilampatti RDO filed a criminal complaint against Premkumar and three others. Premkumar himself was placed under suspension.

Meantime, the case filed against Nallakaman, the one filed by the RDO against Premkumar and a private complaint preferred by Nallakaman himself dragged on in the Madurai District Sessions Court.

Interestingly, Premkumar took the Group-I services examination during the period, emerged successful and was appointed Deputy Superintendent of Police.

At one stage, he was also successful in having the Madurai proceedings quashed by the Madras High Court, but the Supreme Court reversed the ruling and directed that all the three cases be tried together and disposed of by March 31, 1995.

Premkumar moved up the ladder fast, nevertheless. As Superintendent of Police, he was perhaps unhappy that he should be bothered by the likes of Nallakaman and moved the Madras High Court to quash the proceedings against him, but it was his petition that was dismissed with costs.

While Premkumar had alleged that Nallakaman was stalling the trial, Justice Karpagavinayagam held that the cases had indeed been stalled by Premkumar and the other accused policemen and that the officer had shown disrespect to the Supreme Court and the High Court.

The judge noted that the Madurai court had issued as many as 13 non-bailable warrants against Premkumar between September 1995 and March 2000, but none of them was executed.

The judge also expressed dismay that the police officer should have ‘‘disrobed the saree of the woman teacher (Nallakaman’s wife) at the police station and attempted to remove her thali (mangalya sutra).’’

The judge went on to wonder how Premkumar came to be promoted so rapidly when his first appointment as DSP itself was temporary and subject to the issue of the Madurai trial.

But Premkumar seems to be having the last laugh now, emerging as a dashing officer who does not flinch before the might of a prestigious mutt.

If in June 2002, Justice Karpagavinayagam was appalled by what Premkumar had done as a sub-inspector at Vadipatti, more revelations were to follow barely four months later.