Dinakaran Attack Case: The Madras High Court found nine people guilty and sentenced them today.
Nine men found guilty in an attack on the offices of the Dinakaran newspaper in Tamil Nadu's Madurai in 2007, killing three people, were sentenced to life by the Madras High Court on Thursday. Among those sentenced was VP Pandi, also known as "Attack Pandi", a supporter of the then DMK leader MK Alagiri.
The court has also directed the state government to pay Rs 5 lakh each to the families of the three employees of the newspaper - Gopinath, Vinod and Muthuramalingan - who were killed in the attack.
Punishment for a Deputy Superintendent of Police who was also found guilty of dereliction of duty when the attackers targeted the office will be awarded separately.
In 2009, the CBI trial court had acquitted all 17 accused in the case as many witnesses had turned hostile. The CBI had appealed the verdict after a long delay.
The Dinakaran newspaper owned by the Maran brothers - Dayanidhi Maran and Kalanithi Maran, grandnephews of DMK Chief Karunanidhi who died last year, was attacked and set on fire by supporters of Karunanidhi's elder son Alagiri after it published a survey that showed MK Stalin's popularity at 92 per cent and his elder brother Alagiri's at a meagre 2 per cent. Back then, a tug of war between the two brothers over the question of political succession in the DMK was at its peak.
The controversy had then resulted in the Maran brothers losing favour in the DMK leader's family and Dayanidhi Maran who was a union minister then had to resign. However, the two sides later patched up ahead of elections then.
Karunanidhi had groomed his younger son MK Stalin as his political heir. MK Alagiri was expelled during Karunanidhi's tenure and remains cast away after his younger brother Stalin took over the reins of the party after Karunanidhi died last year.