The Madras High Court on Monday set aside the death sentence imposed on a man for murdering Sankar, his Dalit son-in-law, in March 2016, and acquitted him of all charges, The Indian Express reported. It further commuted the death sentence of five others accused in the case to 25 years of imprisonment.

Twenty-two-year-old Sankar was hacked to death on March 13, 2016, near a bus stop in Udumalaipettai town in plain view of passersby because he had married Kausalya from the Thevar community, a dominant caste in South India, eight months earlier. She had suffered a severe head injury during the attack, which was allegedly carried out at the behest of her father who opposed their inter-caste marriage. The violent attack was caught on a CCTV camera.

The police at that time had arrested 11 people, including Kausalya’s parents Chinnasamy and Annalakshmi, and her maternal uncle Pandidurai. In 2017, the Principal District and Sessions Court in Tamil Nadu’s Tirupur had sentenced Chinnaswamy, and five others to death but it acquitted Kausalya’s mother, uncle and a 16-year-old for lack of evidence. Of the two remaining accused, one Stephen Dhanraj was sentenced to a double life term, and the other, Manikandan, was sentenced to five years of rigorous imprisonment.

A division bench of Justice M Sathyanarayanan and M Nirmal Kumar on Monday acquitted Chinnaswamy and set aside all the charges against him, including that of criminal conspiracy. The court also upheld the acquittal of Kausalya’s mother , according to The News Minute.

The court dismissed the state government’s appeal on the grounds that neither the charge of criminal conspiracy nor that of murder stood proved against Chinnaswamy, The Hindu reported. It further set aside the sentences of Dhanraj and Manikandan and ordered for their release.

Chinnaswamy’s advocate ARL Sundaresan said that the prosecution was unable to prove the conspiracy charges against him based on the video clipping. “The video recording [of Sankar’s killing] from a [CCTV camera installed at a] shop was relied on by the prosecution, but it was recovered after four days and it could have been morphed,” he told The News Minute. “We argued that the expert who looked at the video was not a proper one.”

Meanwhile, the government counsel on Monday said they will definitely challenge the Madras High Court’s verdict.