was taken up by the Madras High Court. On 22 June 2020, the court pronounced the verdict. It acquitted Chinnaswamy and reduced the sentence of five others to life sentence. The court relieved two others, the person who was sentenced to life and one another who was sentenced to five years. In its 367-page judgement, the Justice M Sathyanarayanan and Justice M Nirmal Kumar quoted five major reasons for the sentence based on the submission made by the police and Additional Advocate General C Emilias. There was no evidence that the amount of 80,000 from the joint account of Chinaswamy & Annalakshmi during 12–14 February 2016 was given to A4-A6. Secondly, there was no evidence to prove that Chinnaswamy booked room in the hotel, nor for the stay of A4, A5 and A8 in the quoted days in the hotel Bakya Mahal. The account of the eyewitness to having seen A4-A6 along with Chinnaswamy was not proven. Kousalya made a police complaint after her marriage that she was forcibly taken away by her parents and her Thali was removed. She withdrew the complaint later when she returned to Shankar and mentioned that no action be taken against her parents. Though there were phone records during the days between 5-Feb-16 to 2-Mar-16 between Chinnaswamy and A4-8, the other evidences were not sufficient to prove beyond doubt that Chinnawamy orchestrated the murder. After the appeal Kousalya accused the prosecution of misguiding her that her mother would also be punished, but the sentence ended up relieving her father. She mentioned that she would appeal against the verdict in the Supreme Court of India. Political impact The case was a case study for honour killing in Tamil Nadu even in modern times. Thevar is a strong community in the state. The heinous crime was not condemned by the major state parties considering the vote bank of the community and the upcoming 2016 Assembly elections. There was furore in social media and media over the incidence of honour killing. Most of the Dalit parties condemened the incident. A few days after the Session court's judgement, Kousalya questioned the stance of M.K. Stalin, the leader of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. She opened quoted "“Let’s take MK Stalin’s condemnation of Sankar’s murder. In that, instead of talking about the truth of why Sankar died or why I was attacked, he simply said it was a murder. The reason