REPORTABLE IN THE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA INHERENT JURISDICTION REVIEW PETITION (CRL.) NOS. 446-447 OF 2019 IN CRIMINAL APPEAL NOS. 1174-1175 OF 2019 Manoharan ..... PETITIONER(S)

VERSUS State by Inspector of Police, .....RESPONDENT(S)

Variety Hall Police Station, Coimbatore

JUDGMENT

SURYA KANT, J.

These review petitions are directed against the judgment dated

01.08.2019 passed in Manoharan v. State by Inspector of Police, [(2019) 7 SCC 716.], wherein this three-Judge Bench had affirmed conviction of the accused Manoharan for offences punishable under Sections 302, 376(2)(f) and (g) and 201 of the Indian Penal Code (in short “IPC”) and by majority upheld the death sentence confirmed by the High Court.

Signature Not Verified Digitally si F gneAd byC RTUAL MATRIX NATARAJAN Date: 2019.11.07

16:26:36 IST Reason:

2. Brief facts of the present case are as follows:

‘X’, a ten-year-old girl and ‘Y’, her 7-year-old brother were enrolled in Classes V and II respectively in a private school at Coimbatore and would commute around 7:45 a.m. in a pickup vehicle owned by one Kartikeyan (PW-2). On 29.10.2010 the children left as usual with their school bags and lunch boxes and stood about two-hundred feet away from their home, in front of the Vinayakar Temple. Around 8:00 a.m., PW-2 came to the designated pick-up spot but did not find the children there. He contacted the children’s father, Ranjith Kumar Jain (PW-5), over mobile to enquire about their absence. Being in Hyderabad, PW-5 was unable to provide an immediate reply to the query of PW-2 and hence called his wife, the children’s mother - Sangeetha (PW-8), who informed him that both X and Y had already left home. Since the father of the children (PW-5) was already on his way back to Coimbatore, he entrusted his wife to look out for the children and co-ordinate with the van driver. Sangeetha informed Karthikeyan that the children had already left the house, whereafter she along with her relatives Vijay Kumar (PW-1) and Sanjai (PW-6)

started searching for the children.

3. Kamala Bai (PW-9), the paternal grandmother of the children had gone to a Jain Temple around 8:00 a.m. in the morning. Upon returning home at 10:30 a.m. and finding Sangeetha in panic, Kamala Bai informed her that the children had been picked up by a former van driver and it was conjectured that the children must be in school. Vijay Kumar (PW-1) then went to the school and found that the children had however not reached. After a frantic but futile search, PW-1 lodged a police complaint (Ex. P1) with Vasuki (Sub-Inspector of Police, PW-42) at around 11AM under Section 363 of the Indian Penal Code (in short “IPC”).

4. The Investigating Officer (“IO”, PW-47), thereafter, took over investigation and recorded statements of the informant (PW-1), the school’s principal - Anthony Raj (PW-10), as well as of the grandmother (PW-9) and the just returned father of the children (PW-5). First trace of the missing children was received at 6PM when Anthony Raj (PW-10) informed the IO (PW-47) that one Chinnasamy (PW-22) had called to inform that two school bags with identity cards bearing names of X and Y were found floating in and later fished out from the Parambikulam-Axhiyar Project (“PAP”) Canal. A second lead came to the Police from Karthikeyan (PW-2) who received a call from his erstwhile employee – Anbu @ Gandhiraj (PW-7) who conveyed that one Mohanakrishnan had borrowed a Maruti Omni Van from him that morning. This aroused Karthikeyan’s suspicion since Mohanakrishnan was his former employee whose services were terminated after it had been discovered that he was borrowing money from the parents whose children were being transported to school by PW-2’s agency. The IO (PW-47) accordingly advised both Anbu (PW-7) and Karthikeyan (PW-2) to immediately alert the police whenever Mohanakrishnan came to return the Omni Van. At around 9:45PM, Anbu alerted the police that Mohanakrishnan had come to return the Van and he had also confessed to the kidnapp