CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has set aside the orders of the TN State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) for its refusal to entertain the plea and its act of simply forwarding the complaints alleging human rights violations to police officers concerned.
The rejection orders violated the procedures envisaged in Chapter IV under the caption “inquiry into complaints and steps to be taken during and after inquiry”, said a division bench of Justices M Venugopal and P D Audikesavalu held recently.
The bench was disposing of a batch of writ petitions from V Tamilarasi and several others challenging various orders of SHRC.
Tamilarasi contended that her complaint was not looked into by SHRC in a proper and real perspective. There had been miscarriage of justice in passing the rejection order dated October 7, 2008. Hence, it is liable to be set aside in the interest of justice, she argued.
The bench held that the October 2008 order in forwarding her complaint to the City Police Commissioner with a directive to look into the matter and do the needful and closing the same, needs to be set aside for the simple reason that the procedures envisaged in Chapter IV under Sections 17 and 18 of the Protection of Human Rights Act were not adhered to.
As such, without going into the merits of the complaint and also not expressing any opinion, the bench set aside the SHRC orders and remitted the matter back to it for fresh consideration and passing orders on merits after affording opportunities to the parties.