Thoothukudi's families have been paid. The officers the commission named still have to answer

Tamil Nadu has done something the families of Thoothukudi waited a long time for. On Wednesday Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay sanctioned ₹5.25 crore more for those hurt in the police firing on Sterlite protesters on May 22 and 23, 2018. Each of the 13 bereaved families will get another ₹25 lakh, and each of the 40 seriously injured another ₹5 lakh. With earlier payments, that makes ₹50 lakh and ₹10 lakh, the very sums the Justice Aruna Jagadeesan Commission recommended in its final report of May 18, 2022.

The government should be credited for that. It should also be asked why it took more than four years after the report and more than eight after the firing.

Money is the easy part

Compensation is something a government can announce in a press release. It costs a budget line and earns a headline. What the commission asked for beyond money is harder. It found that police used excessive force, named 17 police officers for accountability, and faulted the then District Collector, N. Venkatesh, for failing to anticipate the protest. It recommended departmental and, where applicable, criminal action.

None of that has been delivered. In the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court, the state’s affidavit says disciplinary action against Mr. Venkatesh and two senior police officers was dropped under the previous DMK government, and that the present government has declined to reconsider it. The Advocate General told the bench that the government has no statutory obligation to implement the commission’s recommendations in full.

That is technically true of most commission reports. It is also a poor answer to families who buried their dead. A government appoints a judge to find out what happened, receives the finding, and then argues it need not act. If that is the standard, commissions become a way of buying time.

The fair objection

There is a case on the other side, and it deserves a hearing. Officers are entitled to due process. A commission report is not a trial, and its findings cannot be turned into a punishment without a fair procedure. Decisions taken by an earlier government in a service matter cannot always be undone cleanly, and a related case is pending in the Madurai District Court, which is why the bench said it could not pass orders now.

But due process cuts both ways. It means that the officers named should face a proper hearing, not that nobody should. The CBI chargesheet named only one police officer, Inspector Thirumalai. Counsel for the petitioners asked whether the state would set up a Special Investigation Team. The state has not said.

What the state should do

First, the government should tell the High Court that it will reopen the dropped disciplinary proceedings against the three senior officials, and let a fair inquiry decide, instead of defending the decision to drop them.

Second, it should state in the court whether it will form an SIT, and if it will not, why the single CBI chargesheet is enough for a firing in which 13 people died.

Third, the district administration should publish a payment date. The release told Thoothukudi officials to transfer the money without “procedural delays”. It gave no deadline, and families who have waited this long should not have to guess.

Fourth, the state should answer the other demand left untouched by this order, the withdrawal of cases against the protesters themselves.

Paying what a commission recommended is a start. Whether the officers it named are made to answer for the firing is the test of whether the state means to accept that commission’s findings, or only the bill that comes with them.

The reporting behind this view

• 13people killed in the police firing at Thoothukudi on May 22 and 23, 2018
• ₹50 lakhnow payable per bereaved family, as recommended by the commission on May 18, 2022
• 17police officers named by the commission, against whom action is still pending in court