2018 Thoothukudi firing: Police acted at behest of ‘one industrialist’, says Madras HC
The court ordered Tamil Nadu’s Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption to probe the assets of all officers stationed there at the time.
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The Madras High Court on Monday remarked verbally that it believed that the 2018 police firing outside the Sterlite copper plant in Tamil Nadu’s Thoothukudi was carried out by authorities at the behest of “one industrialist”, Bar and Bench reported.
Thirteen unarmed persons were killed in the police firing.
A bench of Justices SS Sundar and N Senthil Kumar also said that the Tamil Nadu government should investigate whether the officers involved in the incident had made any monetary gains.
“All these things happened because one particular industrialist wanted it to happen,” the court said, according to Bar and Bench. “You [police and district authorities] all acted on his behest. He wanted to teach the people a lesson and you facilitated it.”
The court added: “Any place where 100, 200 or 500 people gather routinely, should they now start doing so with fear that they might lose their lives any day? Can the court shut its eyes to this?”
The court then directed the state’s Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption to investigate the assets of all officials, including officers of the Indian Police Service and the Indian Administrative Service, who were stationed in Thoothukudi at that time and named as respondents in the case being heard.
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