Nine brutal murders in a house at Valasaravakkam 40 years ago

On February 27, 1984, nine persons were found dead. Jayaprakash, 21, was arrested for the murders. He was awarded death penalty. But the High Court commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment in 1989 because of the long delay in the disposal of his mercy plea

In the morning of February 27, 1984, nine persons, eight of them belonging to a family, were found dead in mysterious circumstances at a house at Palaniappa Nagar, off Virugambakkam. The highly decomposed bodies were found lying in a heap in one of the rooms that was locked from outside. The dead included three brothers, the wives of two of them, and their three children. The ninth was an employee of a small-scale plastic factory, owned by the brothers at Virugambakkam. Though the cause of death was not immediately known, the police suspected that they should have been poisoned and murdered, a few days ago, presumably on a Friday.

The tragedy came to light around 5.15 a.m. on a Monday when the father in-law of one of the brothers arrived from Dharmapuri to visit his daughter. Seeing the doors locked and blood stains outside, he called out to the neighbours for help. The police broke open the door and found the corpses. Initially, the police suspected that the deaths could have been caused by poisoning, followed by stabbing and cutting. Some plates containing half-eaten food were found in the room. A couple of the bodies had ropes tied to the necks. Forensic experts were busy until the evening, taking the fingerprints and searching for other clues. Some injection needles were recovered from the vicinity. A police dog led them to a butcher shop nearby.

No noise from the house

Neighbours told the investigators that no noise came from the house. The deceased were last seen on Friday. Jayaprakash, the brother-in-law of the eldest of the brothers, who was staying with the family, had told them on Saturday morning that everyone had gone to Tirupati on Friday night in a van. He himself was last seen on Sunday afternoon, when he went off in a motorcycle with two suitcases. The police began a search for him. Initial interrogation of a labourer at Valasaravakkam, close to the scene of crime, revealed that Jayaprakash had sought his help in digging a pit for a septic tank in the house on Saturday. The plan had, however, fallen through as the labourer felt that it was not feasible to scoop up the earth near the locked room for a septic tank. Enquiries were also made at a karate school at Mambalam where Jayaprakash had learnt the martial art.

Hit from behind

Post-mortem revealed that of the nine killed, four men and two women had been hit from behind with a weapon similar to the butcher’s long knife which had sharp and blunt edges, as was evident from the uniform skull fractures and incised wounds on the chest, the neck and the hips. Strangulation with a rope had also been resorted to. Two girls, aged six and one, and a six-month-old infant had been killed by strangulation.

Jayaprakash, who was wanted for the murders, had sneaked into a students’ hostel at Triplicane, but escaped before a police team arrived. An associate of Jayaprakash at the hostel told the police that his friend was on his way to Tirupati. A police team went there. On March 1, the special team arrested Jayaprakash, 21, in Tirupati. He was brought to the city and remanded in judicial custody. He confessed to the murders. The victims included his sister, brother-in-law and their six-month-old baby. They were killed one after another between 3 p.m. and 10.30 p.m. on Friday because he was unable to bear with the humiliating treatment meted out to him by the family, he told the police.

The prosecution’s case was that between 3.30 p.m. and 10 p.m. on February 24, 1984, Jayaprakash caused the death of Narasimhan, his wife, their six-month-old male child, his brother Mani and his wife and their two female children aged six and two, another brother Arumugham, and Sekar, the employee in their factory at Palaniappa Nagar. He had beaten some of them with casuarina sticks and throttled them, and attacked some others with a knife and strangulated them with a rope. He pushed down a few and throttled them. A uniform pattern of attack was evident in all these murders, the prosecution said.

On May 26, the charge sheet was filed and the trial was conducted before the District Sessions Court, Chengalpattu. From his confession, Jayaprakash seemed to have had no peace of mind and he saw a Tamil film, Nooravadu Naal, directed by Manivannan. The theme of the film was the murder of two persons and the attack on the third, who did not succumb to injuries. The prosecution said it was probable that to ensure that the victims should not be alive, Jayaprakash not only attacked them in the back of the head to make them unconscious but also resorted to strangulation by tying the necks with jute ropes.

The defence argued that the murders might have been committed by ruthless masked dacoits who were frequenting that locality and it was impossible for a single person to commit nine murders. The court dismissed the contention as being devoid of merit.

The court awarded the death sentence to Jayaprakash because of the magnitude of the crime and the brutal and inhuman manner in which the nine persons were murdered. On April 9, 1985, the Madras High Court confirmed the sentence. However, the execution was delayed.

G. Ramasubramanian, retired DIG, Prisons, said, “Then he was kept in the condemned prisoners’ cell, which was kept locked round the clock. The cell would be opened only by the jailer and not by any other officer. A guard would always be on duty in front of the cell. His lawyer appealed against the verdict before the higher courts. Subsequently, the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.”

In 1989, a Bench of the High Court commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment on the ground that there was a long delay on the part of the executive in disposing of his mercy petition. Subsequently, Jayaprakash was released from prison under an amnesty scheme and led a reformed life, prison sources said.