MADURAI: Two division benches of the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court disposed of 8,612 cases falling under various categories such as writ petitions, habeas corpus petitions, writ appeals, criminal appeals, civil miscellaneous appeals, appeal suits, and other miscellaneous petitions in 57 working days between September 5 and December 2.
The first division bench, comprising justices R Mahadevan and J Sathya Narayana Prasad, disposed of 6,512 cases during the period. In the 'main cases' category, the bench is said to have disposed of 2,506 writ petitions, 218 writ appeals, 28 contempt petitions, seven civil miscellaneous appeals, five habeas corpus petitions, three civil revision petitions, three review applications (writ), two appeal suits, two contempt appeals, and a second appeal, totalling 2,775 cases.
Whereas, in the category of miscellaneous cases, 3,737 cases have been disposed of by the bench, including 2,897 writ miscellaneous petitions, and 769 civil miscellaneous petitions among others. The bench has also passed several notable orders on public interest litigations. Their orders on easy accessibility to persons with disabilities (PwD) in tourist places, banning the use of mobile phones inside all temples in Tamil Nadu, curtailing the registration of plots of unapproved layouts, banning bogus websites running in the names of temples and deities, ensuring proper functioning of mobile counselling centres to prevent sexual crimes against children in schools, are worth mentioning. The bench has cleared hundreds of matters connected to encroachments and SARFAESI cases that have been pending for years.
Likewise, the second division bench of the high court, which initially comprised of justices J Nisha Banu and N Anand Venkatesh and later comprised of justices MS Ramesh and N Anand Venkatesh, has disposed of 2,100 main and miscellaneous cases in the same phase with 1,261 cases in main cases category and 839 in the miscellaneous.
This bench primarily dealt with habeas corpus petitions and has disposed of 719 of them. Other cases included 155 writ appeals, 63 criminal appeals, and 45 writ petitions among others. The bench had recently initiated suo motu contempt proceedings against a key witness who turned hostile in the Gokulraj murder case. It had also mooted a separate investigation wing in the police department to deal with serious crimes and had warned the state that it would impose costs if preventive detention laws are misused.