Lifer For Saravana Bhavan Founder P Rajagopal For Murder

The founder of Saravana Bhavan, P Rajagopal got life imprisonment from the Supreme court, while it upheld the conviction. This comes after ten years of the Madras High Court’s sentence. The SC Bench has given until July 7 for him to surrender. This is on medical grounds.

The start of this case dates back to 2001. P Rajagopal alias Annachi had hired 8 henchmen to abduct and murder Prince Santhakumar.

Santhakumar was a math teacher. He married Jeevajyothi who was the daughter of Rajagopal’s employee Ramaswamy.

The newly married couple approached Jeevajyothi's uncle and Rajagopal for a loan to start a travel agency. Rajagopal, who then became obsessed with her, started calling her on a daily basis and gifting her expensive things like jewellery.

Rajagopal wanted to marry Jeevajyothi and so he tried to create differences between them. He also kept gifting Jeevajyothi with a lot of costly things and wanted her to be his third wife.

Rajagopal had also announced to Santhakumar that he intended to marry Jeevajyothi. The couple had also tried to flee from Chennai to an unknown location, but Santakumar was assaulted by Rajagopal’s henchmen. When they tried to register a complaint, they were harassed.

On October 2001 Santakumar was abducted and his wife was taken to a remote village in Tamil Nadu. Although his henchmen had assured that he was tied to a track left to be killed by the next coming train, but he was spared.

Santhakumar had then contacted his wife and they both went to confront Rajagopal. On 26 October 2001, Jeevajyothi, Santhakumar and her family were taken to Tiruchendur. Somewhere along the way Santhakumar was separated from the rest of the family and murdered. His body was found in the hill station of Kodaikanal.

3 years after the incident a sessions court had convicted Rajagopal and had given him a sentence of 10 years of rigorous imprisonment.

For Jeevajyothi, it had been a huge battle to bring Rajagopal to justice. Santhakumar's own brother had turned hostile and refused to identify his dead body that had been recovered from a jungle.

The Madras HC in its judgment had noted that the couple's final effort to convince Rajagopal to leave them alone made it 'obvious that the overwhelming love for each other persuaded them to take the risk'.

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