Chennai: The Madras High Court has appointed retired judge Justice M. Sathyanarayanan as a one man commission of inquiry to probe incident of human faeces found in an overhead tank that supplied drinking water to Scheduled Caste residents of Vengaivayal
village in Pudukkottai district of Tamil Nadu in December last year.
The First Bench comprising acting Chief Justice T.Raja and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy passed the interim orders on a Public Interest litigation by Rajkamal demanding a CBI probe into it.
The Bench directed the retired Judge to visit Vengaivayal village and submit the report to the court within two months.
Soon after the incident, the Tamil Nadu government ordered a CB-CID probe into it.
“There is not a single development in the CB-CID investigation even after 90 days of the incident,” the Court said and directed the State government to provide all logistics arrangements to the one member commission.
Earlier, the petitioner contended that “even after 70 years of independence, untouchability still exists in the country. The social justice which was offered by the constitution is also a
long-dream to the scheduled caste people. The scheduled caste and scheduled tribes being treated as second grade citizens of India.”
He also contended that though the investigation into the Vengaivayal incident was transferred to CB-CID, there was no breakthrough or progress made in the case and no action was taken against the persons involved in the incident.
“Therefore, there was a need to transfer the investigation to the CBI, the petitioner said and sought a direction in this regard.”
Responding to this, Additional Advocate General Ravindran submitted the report of the CB-CID investigating officer to the Bench and said that a total of 147 witnesses have been
questioned in connection with this case.
“As contradictory information has been revealed about the incident, further investigation is underway,” he said.
