CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has quashed an FIR registered against the head of the Centre for Affiliation of Institutions (CAI) of Anna University in the ghost faculty cases after finding no case was made out against him.
Justice M Nirmal Kumar passed the orders recently on the petition filed by Dr VR Giridev who was appointed as the Director of CAI, a year after the malpractices in affiliation were committed.
The Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) registered the FIR for the criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust and criminal misconduct under various sections of IPC and Prevention of Corruption Act against 17 faculties, other staff of the university and the affiliated private engineering colleges.
Giridev, appointed as the Director of CAI on May 9, 2024, was named as the sixth accused in the FIR regarding 353 individuals working as full time faculty in more than one institution.
He approached the High Court with the plea for quashing the FIR. His counsel submitted that the affiliation orders were issued by July 31, 2023 well before he assumed office and so he was not involved or participated in any of the affiliation processes for the academic year 2023-24.
The judge noted that Giridev has implemented Aadhaar-based biometric authentication of faulty members and introduced mandatory videography of the entire inspection process during 2024-25. These steps were the benchmark for eliminating the malpractices.
Noting that the Syndicate had granted approval to file a regular case against the officers as requested by DVAC and it wanted restraint be shown for action against the petitioner and another professor prior to filing the regular case, the judge said these instructions were not followed.
“In view of the above, this court finds that no case is made against the petitioner warranting any investigation and continuation of investigation would amount to abuse of process of law,” Justice Nirmal Kumar said in the order.