"The Petitioner has no regard for law or truth.  The role played by the police officers in this case would make this court think that these officers have behaved like barbarians without giving any respect to human dignity, that too with the ladies.  It would be shameful to find that a person like the petitioner has been allowed to work in the police department.” The petitioner so denounced was none other than Superintendent of Police K. Premkumar, the crusading officer from Kancheepuram.

From the time he was a sub-inspector in Madurai in the eighties, through his days as Deputy Superintendent of Police to the late nineties when he was promoted to the post of Superintendent of Police, Premkumar has had little patience for the rule book and his high-handedness has shocked his superi insiders. His beginnings were appropriately ominous.  When he was only a sub-inspector in Vadipatti in Madurai district he took upon himself the job of evicting a tenant of a fellow policeman.  The ex-serviceman tenant, Nallakaman decided to dig in his heels.  But he had failed to take into account Premkumar’s interest in the case and had to pay for his costly mistake.

On February 1, 1982 Nallakaman, his wife and son were beaten up at the Vadipatti police station by Premkumar and his colleagues.  The head of the family was then handcuffed and paraded on the streets and dragged to the Vadipatti bus stand.  To top it all, a criminal case was registered against the hapless Nallakaman on charges, including attempt to murder.  Public outcry followed, an RDO inquiry was ordered and the report confirmed all the allegations.  Finally, the Usilampatti RDO filed a criminal complaint against Premkumar and three others.  Premkumar himself was placed under suspension.

Meantime, the case filed against Nallakaman, the one filed by the RDO against Premkumar and a private complaint preferred by Nallakaman himself dragged on in the Madurai District Sessions Court.

Interestingly, Premkumar took the Group-I services examination during the period, emerged successful and was appointed Deputy Superintendent of Police. 

At one stage, he was also successful in having the Madurai proceedings quashed by the Madras High Court, but the Supreme Court reversed the ruling and directed that all the three cases be tried together and disposed of by March 31, 1995.

Premkumar moved up the ladder fast, nevertheless.  As Superintendent of Police, he was perhaps unhappy that he should be bothered by the likes of Nallakaman and moved the Madras High Court to quash the proceedings against him, but it was his petition that was dismissed with costs.

While Premkumar had alleged that Nallakaman was stalling the trial, Justice Karpagavinayagam held that the cases had indeed been stalled by Premkumar and the other accused policemen and that the officer had shown disrespect to the Supreme Court and the High Court.  The judge noted that the Madurai court had issued as many as 13 non-bailable warrants against Premkumar between September 1995 and March 2000, but none of them was executed.  The judge also expressed dismay that the police officer should have “disrobed the saree of the woman teacher (Nallakaman’s wife) at the police station and attempted to remove her thali (mangalya sutra).”

The judge went on to wonder how Premkumar came to be promoted so rapidly when his first appointment as DSP itself was temporary and subject to the issue of the Madurai trial.  But Premkumar seems to be having the last laugh now, emerging as a dashing officer who does not flinch before the might of a prestigious Mutt.

If in June 2002, Justice Karpagavinayagam was appalled by what Premkumar had done as a sub-inspector at Vadipatti, more revelation were to follow barely fur months later.

John Joseph, a Christian priest of Marthandam in Kanyakumar district and a key accused in the Gilbert Raj murder case, moved the HC against the brutal treatment meted out to him and two other co-accused, Sister Wiselin Femina Rose and Sister Sahayarani Jeyamary.  The priest had been brutally beaten up and the sisters stripped and molested by Premkumar and another DSP Paneerselvam.

Directing a CB-CID inquiry into the allegations, the judge recorded in ghastly detail the testimonies of the two sisters: “Premkumar, DSP, came near Sahayarani and removed her saree and petticoat and threw them at the corner of the room.  Then he also tore the blouse and pulled her breasts.  Premkumar, DSP, took his lathi and fisted on her stomach as well as on her private parts.

At the same time, Panneerselvam, DSP, similarly removed the saree of Femina Rose.

After tearing the blouse, he pulled her breast and fisted on the chest with lathi.  Joseph John and Gnanakan, father of Femina Roase (who were also present) prostrated before Premkumar, DSP, and Panneerselvem, DSP, requesting them not to outrage the modesty of the ladies.  They also said that they would give any statement as they dictated…”

Premkumar was pardoned under the Probationary Offenders Act in the Nallakaman case by the Madurai Sessions Court, in effect holding him guilty.  But in the Kanyakumar case, no attempts seem to have been made by the CB-CID to launch prosecution against him despite a division Bench of the High Court and the Supreme Court upholding the single judge’s order.