MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has quashed criminal proceedings initiated by the CBI against retired Inspector General of Police (Idol Wing CID) AG Pon Manickavel on charges that he falsely implicated a former DSP Kader Batcha in an idol theft case. Justice RN Manjula passed the order recently while allowing a plea filed by Manickavel.
Kader Batcha had filed a petition before the court seeking a direction to register a case against Manickavel for falsely implicating him in the case involving the theft of 13 idols from Palavoor temple in Tirunelveli.
Manickavel had added Batcha as an accused on charges that he and a few other officers sold two of the idols recovered by them during their probe for Rs 15 lakh.
Since Batcha denied the allegations and claimed false implication, the high court directed CBI to conduct a preliminary inquiry and file a report before the trial court. But the CBI, instead of filing a report, registered an FIR against him, Manickavel claimed.
Though the FIR was registered based on the preliminary inquiry, the inquiry report was not annexed as a part of the FIR, he further alleged. His attempts to get a copy of the preliminary report also ended in vain as the additional chief judicial magistrate, Madurai rejected his application, Manickavel added and moved the high court challenging the order as well as the FIR.
Hearing both petitions, Justice Manjula observed that furnishing information about the charges for which the case has been registered against an accused is not just an empty formality, but compliance of principle of natural justice.
The accused has the right to initiate proceedings to quash the FIR, which he cannot exercise in the absence of the base information through which he was brought into the case, she added.
She further observed that the FIR itself is non-est and redundant, as it has been registered not only in excess of CBI’s authority but without seeking permission from the HC as mandated in the earlier directions given by a division bench in a 2018 case that no action or inquiry should be initiated against Manickavel or his team without concurrence from the high court.
Since registration of the FIR itself is not legal in view of the various reasons, the charge sheet filed stemming out of an illegal FIR cannot be considered legal, she opined.
“If such baseless reports (chargesheet) are allowed to be given undue importance than what it would deserve, then in every case involving police officials, an opposite syndicate will start to act against the investigating team,” the judge observed.