CHENNAI: Madras High Court severely criticized the Tamil Nadu government for the illegal detention of noted economist and associate professor of MIDS A Kalaiyarasan recently by the police in the pretext of inquiry into an alleged derogatory comment against a woman MLA of TVK made from a social media account which displayed the economist’s picture.
The illegal detention had led to a huge outrage and condemnation by political parties, social organisations and eminent persons. It was alleged that the police action was intended to intimidate him following his caustic comments against the TVK government over the failure to check the rising prices of essential commodities. A minister had expressed apology and the Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay met Kalaiyarasan as the tempers ran high.
Justice N Ramesh made the scathing comments and remarks on Monday while granting anticipatory bail to DMK councillor D Sudha in a case of alleged derogatory comments against the Chief Minister and TVK president Vijay.
He said the “grace” shown at the end does not answer the questions about the detention as to how the plainclothesmen were sent to the economist’s doorstep at dawn and what action was taken against those who did so.
"An apology, however high its source, is not an accountability; and a remedy that depends on the Chief Minister’s personal intervention is not a remedy at all," he said.
The judge said Kalaiyarasan was released within hours thanks to his eminence but a common citizen could have ended up going through the rigours of being locked up, remand and the trial before anyone could ask if the social media account was his own.
The measure of a police force is not how it treats the eminent when the press is watching but how it treats the unknown when nobody is, he remarked.
Office of CM is not so fragile
Referring to the case against the DMK councillor, the judge said those who hold high office in a republic are liable to be "criticized, lampooned and not rarely, abused."
"The office (of CM) is not so fragile that a ward councillor’s invective at a party meeting can shake it and the state diminishes the office it claims to protect when it answers words of that kind with the machinery of arrest," he said.
Justice Ramesh said a government, with self-confidence, meets criticism with argument, mockery with performance and abuse-where it truly crosses the line- with remedy the law of defamation provides.
Saying that magnanimity towards political speech is not a grace the State may extend or withhold, he said it is what the Constitution exacts of those who hold power over their critics.
"An even hand between the ruling party and its opponents is not a courtesy the police extend; it is a condition of their constitutional legitimacy. The police serve the State, which endures, and not the party in government, which changes," the judge said.