The Sathankulam Custodial Killings and the Rare Triumph of Accountability.
by Jameel Aahmed Milansaar.
Six years after two ordinary traders were tortured to death inside a Tamil Nadu police station, justice has finally spoken in a language the system rarely uses. On April 6, 2026, the First Additional District and Sessions Court in Madurai sentenced nine policemen to death for the brutal custodial murders of P. Jayaraj and his son J. Bennicks. Judge G. Muthukumaran called it a “rarest of rare” case—one in which the very people sworn to protect the law became its most savage violators. The court also ordered the convicts to pay the victims’ family a collective ₹1.40 crore in compensation. For a state long scarred by stories of police excess, this verdict lands like a thunderclap.
Jayaraj, 58, ran a modest mobile-phone showroom in Sathankulam, near Thoothukudi. His son Bennicks, 31, helped at a nearby stand. Neither man had a criminal record. On the evening of June 19, 2020, at the height of the Covid lockdown, a police team led by Inspector S. Sridhar dragged Jayaraj from his shop on the flimsiest of pretexts: an alleged violation of closing-hour rules that the CBI would later prove never happened. When Bennicks rushed to the station to check on his father, he too was pulled inside. What followed was not interrogation but a night-long ritual of vengeance.
Locked inside the Sathankulam station, the father and son were stripped, beaten mercilessly, and forced to clean their own blood from the floors and walls. Witnesses later described hearing screams and taunts: “How dare you speak against the police?” The men were kicked, slapped, and assaulted in ways that left them bleeding internally and rectally. By morning they could barely stand. Yet a doctor at the local government hospital declared them fit for remand. A magistrate, citing pandemic protocols, sent them to Kovilpatti sub-jail without ever seeing their injuries up close. Two days later, Bennicks collapsed and died of massive internal haemorrhage. Jayaraj followed the next morning, succumbing to a punctured lung. Post-mortems left no doubt: the deaths were the direct result of repeated custodial assault.
The horror did not stay hidden. Protests erupted across Tamil Nadu and beyond. The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court stepped in suo motu, slammed the police for evidence tampering—blood-stained clothes dumped in dustbins, CCTV mysteriously “missing”—and handed the case to the CBI. The investigation was thorough: forensic teams scoured the station, DNA matched blood splatters to the victims, and a sanitation worker testified to being ordered to scrub the crime scene. Ten officers were charged; one, Special Sub-Inspector Pauldurai, died of Covid before trial. The remaining nine—Inspector S. Sridhar, Sub-Inspectors P. Raghu Ganesh and K. Balakrishnan, Head Constables S. Murugan and A. Saamidurai, and Constables M. Muthuraj, S. Chelladurai, X. Thomas Francis, and S. Veilumuthu—stood trial together.
For five long years the family waited. Jayaraj’s wife Selvarani and daughter Persis lived with the daily ache of loss while watching the system they once trusted drag its feet. On March 23 this year, the court convicted all nine of murder, conspiracy, wrongful confinement, and destruction of evidence. Last Monday, after hearing arguments on quantum of sentence, Judge Muthukumaran delivered the maximum punishment. He noted the officers’ abuse of authority, the victims’ complete innocence, and the calculated cruelty that turned a lockdown check into a death sentence. In a quiet, almost symbolic gesture, the judge reportedly broke the nib of his pen after pronouncing the words.
The family has called the verdict a warning to every uniform that believes it can act with impunity. “Those who abuse power and commit barbaric violations should be a little scared now,” Selvarani said. For human-rights activists, the ruling is historic. Custodial deaths in India are depressingly common—hundreds every year, most swept under the carpet by “natural causes” certificates and collusive inquiries. Full convictions are rare; death sentences rarer still. This case succeeded because ordinary citizens refused to stay silent, because the High Court refused to look away, and because the CBI built an iron-clad forensic case.
Yet even now the fight is not over. The nine convicts, currently in Madurai Central Prison, will appeal to the Madras High Court. The road to final confirmation may stretch years longer. Still, something fundamental has shifted. For once, the state has acknowledged in open court that its own protectors turned predators. The compensation order—payable from the officers’ salaries and properties if necessary—adds a measure of tangible restitution.
In the end, the Sathankulam verdict is more than punishment for nine individuals. It is a public reckoning with the rot that allows torture to flourish behind station walls. It reminds every police officer, every magistrate, and every citizen that the Constitution’s promise of dignity does not evaporate the moment handcuffs click shut. Six years late, but not too late, the system has shown it can still deliver justice when it chooses to. The question now is whether this singular act of courage will become the rule—or remain the heartbreaking exception.
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