New Delhi: Tutored witnesses, embellished testimonies, omissions and oversights by the prosecution, lack of a case diary, and insufficient evidence — these were some of the reasons cited by a bench of the Kerala High Court for acquitting 13 RSS workers in a 14-year-old murder case.
On 12 July, a bench of justices K. Vinod Chandran and C. Jayachandran overturned a 2016 trial court order that had convicted 13 RSS workers in the 2008 murder of CPI(M) worker Vishnu over a “political rivalry”.
However, the HC judgment declared that the prosecution had “miserably failed to prove the incriminating circumstances against the accused”, mounted “nonsensical” allegations of conspiracy, and “clearly tutored” the witnesses.
Acknowledging the “intrigue, spite, and deceit” of political rivalries, and the divisions between the “men in red and those saffron clad”, the court nevertheless rejected the prosecution’s case as reflecting a “deliberate attempt” to “project half-truths”.
The verdict came on the back of a 2016 appeal by the RSS workers against their conviction by the additional sessions court in Thiruvananthapuram. The court had sentenced 11 of the accused to double life imprisonment, one to life imprisonment, and one to three years of jail.
