The Madras High Court criticised students who turned hostile in the 2016 Karur engineering college murder case, saying they became “paper tigers in real life” after failing to support the prosecution despite witnessing the brutal classroom attack.
The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court strongly criticised students who turned hostile in the 2016 murder of a woman engineering student in a Karur college classroom.
The court said they had become paper tigers in real life after failing to support the prosecution despite witnessing the attack.
A division bench of Justices N Anand Venkatesh and KK Ramakrishnan dismissed the appeal of Udayakumar, a former engineering student sentenced to life imprisonment for killing his former girlfriend and classmate inside her college classroom.
The court also upheld his conviction and sentence.
The bench noted that the woman student was killed on August 30, 2016, after she decided to end her relationship with Udayakumar. The bench recorded that Udayakumar had studied with her in the Civil Engineering department at Karur College of Engineering, but later discontinued his course after being debarred from examinations.
According to the prosecution, Udayakumar, enraged, entered the classroom armed with a wooden log and repeatedly struck the student on the head in the presence of a faculty member and several students. She later died from her injuries.
While confirming the conviction, the court expressed disappointment that several student witnesses had retracted their earlier statements during the trial.
The bench observed,
“The student community must understand that it is only a matter of time that a similar incident may happen to any student in a college in such a gruesome fashion,”
The judges said,
“There is no use in merely expressing dissent and expressing views in social media and it has to translate itself into action or else the students will only become paper tigers in real life,”
The court also pointed out that students who had recorded statements under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code later gave different evidence in court. It said the witnesses had let down the deceased and failed in their duty to uphold truth.
The prosecution’s case, the court noted, was affected when multiple student eyewitnesses turned hostile. Despite this, the court relied significantly on the testimony of an injured assistant professor, who had been attacked while attempting to intervene. The judges held that the testimony of an injured witness is more reliable and found no basis to doubt his identification of the accused.
The bench further observed that some witnesses appeared to have been won over during the long trial. Referring to one student witness who changed his version almost 25 months after his chief examination, the court said the conflicting testimony could not be trusted.
Describing the incident as part of a growing pattern of violent reactions to relationship rejection, the court said the accused’s reckless gory act had ended the life and dashed the future plans of a young engineering student.
The judges also noted that the assault occurred in broad daylight inside a classroom, with fellow students present, and that the assistant professor who tried to rescue the victim was also assaulted.
Concluding that the evidence against Udayakumar was overwhelming, the court upheld the trial court’s decision and directed the authorities to ensure he undergo the remaining period of his life sentence.