Court begins hearing on private complaint on road rage case involving former Mayor and KSRTC driver

A magistrates’ court here has begun hearing a private complaint alleging that the police showed political bias by absolving former Mayor Arya Rajendran and her husband, MLA Sachin Dev, both CPI(M) leaders, in a 2024 road-rage case involving them and a KSRTC bus driver, H L Yedu.  The Judicial First Class Magistrate-I, Thiruvananthapuram, has issued notices to Ms Rajendran, her husband, CPI(M) leader Sachin Dev, MLA, Ms Rajendran’s brother Aravind, and her sister-in-law Arya, following a Criminal Miscellaneous Petition (CMP) filed by Mr Yedu alleging a flawed and prejudiced chargesheet with the prosecutorial odds stacked in favour of the ruling front politicians.  Mr Yedu alleged that the police had worked overtime to exonerate Ms Rajendran and her husband of wrongdoing and had merely named the former Mayor’s brother as a respondent in the rap sheet filed in the court recently.  Ms Rajendran and her husband found themselves in a spot and under intense media scrutiny after they used their private car to head off the KSRTC long-distance bus driven by Mr Yedu in April, 2024.  The incident occurred on the arterial Palayam-Statue road. Grainy traffic camera footage, later broadcast by television channels, showed Ms Rajendran and Mr Dev gesticulating at Mr Yedu from below the driver’s cabin even as the mid-road incident snarled traffic on the busy stretch.  The footage showed the MLA’s car parked on the zebra crossing in front of the bus, and the traffic light above was blinking green. Subsequently, Mr Dev entered the bus cabin and spoke to the conductor.  Later, the husband-and-wife politicians accused Mr Yedu of making obscene gestures at them and trying to push their car off the road by driving the KSRTC bus in an intimidating manner.  Mr Yedu’s counsel told the court that the police had glossed over evidence that the duo had intercepted a public transport bus, prevented the plaintiff, as a government employee, from discharging his duties, and consequently inconvenienced scores of passengers on board the bus, including women and children.  Mr Yedu also petitioned the court to order the police to retrieve the “stolen” memory card of the bus’s onboard camera, which he said would provide hard evidence against the politician couple. He alleged that the bus conductor had misappropriated the memory card to destroy evidence implicating Mr Dev, allegedly at the MLA’s behest.  The incident involving Ms Rajendran and Mr Dev had become a political hot potato for the CPI(M). The BJP and Congress had accused Ms Rajendran and Mr Dev of broadcasting a sense of entitlement and riding roughshod over ordinary people.

Published - December 22, 2025 06:50 pm IST