MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court recently directed the Inspector General of Police (South Zone) to constitute a special team to ascertain whether the accused in a case, in which several persons, including a woman police inspector from Madurai, were arrested for allegedly extorting Rs 10 lakh from a man in 2021, had attempted to influence the victim or the other witnesses in the case in any manner.
Justice B Pugalendhi, who passed the order, also directed the inspector general and the Madurai district legal services authority (DLSA) to ensure the protection of the witnesses in the case so that they could depose before the trial court without fear.
The judge passed the order recently while rejecting a plea filed by the police to cancel the bail granted to the woman inspector, M Vasanthi, on charges that she had influenced the victim to retract his statement and file a compromise memo as if he does not have any objection for quashing the case. The judge noted that the police have not specifically stated as to how and when the accused inspector had influenced the victim. Therefore, the court cannot cancel the bail granted to her, he opined.
“However, the nature of the complaint, the manner in which the case was registered, the manner in which the trial is protracted, the timing at which the joint compromise memo has been filed and the contents of the affidavit filed by the defacto complainant (victim) would prima facie make out a case as against the accused that there was an attempt to jeopardise the trial,” the judge observed. Stating that the court cannot be a mute spectator to any subversion of judicial process, and it is its duty to ensure a fair trial, the judge issued the above directions.
Plea seeks nat’l council to promote Tamil, HC asks centre to respond
Chennai: The Madras High Court on Thursday ordered notice to the Centre to respond to a petition seeking setting up of a national council to promote Tamil on the lines of the ones set up for Sindhi, Urdu and Sanskrit. When the petition, filed by advocate B Jagannath, came up for hearing, the first bench of Acting Chief Justice T Raja and Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy ordered notice to the union government directing it to file a detailed counter-affidavit within four weeks.
The petitioner sought the court to issue an order to the secretary of the union department of higher education to constitute a national council for promotion of Tamil, preferably in the name of Tamil king Jatavarman Sundara Pandian, on the lines of the ones already set up to promote Urdu, Sindhi and Sanskrit.