MADURAI: The Madras high court on Friday said no one has been booked even three years after the Tuticorin police opened fire on unarmed anti-Sterlite protesters claiming 13 lives.
“It is somewhat alarming that the state through its police fired at unarmed protesters and no one is booked three years after the incident.
It may not augur well for a civilised society governed by the constitutional principles that we have to merely throw money at the families of the victims and give closure to an incident of possible brutality and excessive police action,” a division bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice T S Sivagnanam said.
The court said while the state has remedied the nuisance that was created, a greater part with regard to the punishment still remains unanswered.
“Can we kill people and throw money at them and say that our job is done? Is that the society that we want to build?….
Just throwing money at some people and everything else is hushed up,” it orally observed.
The court orally observed that the greater part with regard to punishment should also be answered to prevent incidents like Tuticorin police firing in the future.
The judges made the observations while directing the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to submit the report of its team that probed the police firing on anti-Sterlite protesters in Tuticorin in 2018.
It also directed the Tamil Nadu government to submit the interim report of the Justice (retired) Aruna Jagadeesan Commission.
The court passed the order in a plea seeking a direction to NHRC to reopen the case pertaining to the police firing incident.