JOIN US“Justice has been done even if delayed,” said Veerasamy, the parent of one of the victims in the incident, Kokila Vani, who awaited the Supreme Court judgment on Monday seated besides the garlanded picture of his late daughter at his home in Namakkal. The tearful father further added, “Such violent incidents should never take place anywhere.”
The three Tamil Nadu Agriculture University students — Hemalatha from Tambaram near Chennai, V Gayathri from Viruddachalam and Kokilavani from Namakkal—lost their lives as the bus in which they travelled was stopped by some AIADMK men on the outskirts of Dharmapuri town and was set ablaze by them after they ordered the passengers to alight. The students were returning from a study tour.
“My heart shudders even now when I think of my daughter killed by the flames when the bus was torched,” reminisced Kasi Ammal, the mother of another girl student victim, Hemalatha, at her suburban Selayur home near Tambaram. Hemalatha’s father, an employee of a nationalised bank died last year.
“Though the judgment is belated, coming ten years after the incident, the perpetrators of the violence deserved it,” she said. “At least after this Judgment political violence should end everywhere,” she hoped.
Veerasamy said stopping of political violence was the key lesson coming out of this verdict, even as he thanked, among others, all the teachers and Kokilavani’s co-students of TNAU who stood by firmly during the investigation and trial of this sensational case.