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Madras HC dismisses bail plea by 4 policemen in custodial death case from 2025
Kumar died while in police custody during questioning into an alleged case of theft.
The Madras high court has dismissed bail applications filed by four Tamil Nadu police personnel, accused of killing a 29-year-old temple security guard in custody in Sivaganga district two years ago.
On February 16, Justice S Srimathy of the Madurai bench of the Madras high court refused to grant bail to the accused policemen, A Ananth, S Raja, Sankaramanikandan, and Prabhu.
In July last year, the high court had transferred the investigation into the alleged custodial death of B Ajith Kumar, the temple security guard, to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
At the time, the bench of Justices SM Subramaniam and AD Maria Clete had directed the union home ministry to assign an officer of the CBI within a week’s time to head the probe and directed the state police to cooperate with the central agency’s investigation.
Subsequently, the high court had directed a judicial probe into the custodial killing. It took the district judge’s status report on record on Tuesday and directed that a copy of such report be shared with the CBI as well.
The Court, that was hearing a batch of Public Interest Litigations filed by several individuals and the NGO, People’s Watch, following the death of Kumar on June 29 last year, had also directed the TN government to pay rupees 25 lakh as compensation to the deceased’s family.
Kumar died while in police custody during questioning into an alleged case of theft. He had been arrested by the police on June 27, 2025 after a woman filed a complaint alleging that a bag containing some gold jewellery went missing from her car after she gave the car keys to Kumar to park the vehicle near the temple.
After going through the post mortem report in the case, the bench led by Justice Subramaniam had lashed out at the police and said that a mere, “plain reading of the nature of the injuries” on the deceased’s body would reveal that he had been “brutally attacked” by the police in the name of questioning. “Even an ordinary murderer would not have caused these many injuries to a person,” it had said at the time.
