MADURAI: A day after a single judge of the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court sentenced additional chief secretary of highways and minor ports department Pradeep Yadav and two others to two weeks imprisonment in a contempt case, a division bench of the court suspended the sentence.
The division bench, which comprised justices SS Sundar and D Bharatha Chakravarthy, passed the interim order on Thursday in an appeal filed by the officers — Yadav, who was then holding the post of school education secretary, Muthupalanichamy, the then director of teacher education research and training in Chennai, and Boobala Anto, the then principal of Tirunelveli District Institute of Education and Training (DIET).
The single judge had imposed the punishment, which included a penalty of Rs 1,000 each, on the three officers in a contempt petition filed in 2020 by P Gnana Pragasam (74), who was working as a sweeper-cum-gardener in a teacher training institute in Palayapettai over non-compliance of an order passed by the court in 2012 to regularise his service and grant monetary benefits to him.
The single judge had noted that the authorities did not regularise the petitioner’s service immediately after the court order and there was an abnormal delay in the settlement of monetary benefits. Only after the issuance of the statutory notice on July 5, 2023, the authorities complied with the order, he had said, while imposing the punishment.