Auditor assault case: Madras high court issues notice to Kanchi Sankaracharya

CHENNAI: The 14-year-old assault case pending against him returned to haunt the Kanchi Sankaracharya Sri Jayendra Saraswathi on Monday with the Madras high court issuing a notice to him and eight others.
All the accused were acquitted by a trial court here in April this year, and the Tamil Nadu government has challenged the clean chit given to them.
On Monday, Justice R Subbiah issued notice to Jayendra Saraswathi and others, returnable in two weeks.
The prosecution case was that on September 20, 2002, a gang assaulted auditor Radhakrishnan, a former associate of the Kanchi mutt, his wife Jayasree and assistant Krishnan at their home in Mandaveli here. He was assaulted as he was thought to be exposing irregularities in the Kanchi mutt.
The Foreshore Estate police registered a case. However, the investigation into the case picked up momentum only after the Sankaracharya had been arrested in connection with the November 11, 2004 murder of Sankararaman inside the Varadaraja Perumal temple in Kancheepuram. While he was in custody for the murder case, police separately arrested him for the pending assault case as well.
The Sankaracharya and all his co-accused were acquitted of all charges in the murder case in November 2013, but the issue has reached finality since the Puducherry government had decided not to appeal against the acquittal. Since the murder trial had been shifted out of Tamil Nadu and held in Puducherry, it is the call of the latter whether to accept the verdict or challenge it.
Trial in the assault case started a decade after the incident. While two of the accused -- Kathiravan and Appu -- died during the trial, another accused – Ravi Subramaniam -- turned approver. Besides Jayendra Saraswathi, other prominent Kanchi mutt people who faced the trial were Sundaresa Iyer and Raghu, who is brother of junior pontiff Vijayendra Saraswathi.