NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday stayed the Madras High Court's July 29 order directing Tamil Nadu's Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) to probe the assets of police as well as revenue persons involved in the 2018 Thoothukudi Sterlite police firing in the state, in which 13 protesters were killed and 33 personnel were injured.
A bench of the apex court, led by the Chief Justice of India (CJI) D Y Chandrachud, stayed the Madras High Court's Monday order.
It is pertinent and significant to note here that the Madras High Court on Monday granted three months for the state's DVAC to hold a 'fair and transparent' investigation into the assets of these 21 officers. This order was stayed today by the apex court.
A two-judge bench of the Madras High Court, led by Justice SS Sundar and N Senthilkumar, had on July 29, Monday passed the interim orders granting time to DVAC. It was done while hearing a petition filed by Henri Tiphagne, the executive director of People's Watch, seeking orders to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to reopen the investigation into the case.
The Madras High Court has also asked the concerned department secretaries and the DGP to provide "cooperation" to the DVAC director so as to hold "fair, transparent and independent" probe to find out the assets acquired by the Police and Revenue department officers named in Justice Aruna Jagadeesan's commission report.
The Supreme Court stayed the High Court's order, after hearing three state police officers -- S Chandran, Shailesh Kumar Yadav and another person -- being aggrieved by the High Court's order.
During the hearing on Friday, senior lawyer, Kapil Sibal, appearing for the three police officers, told the apex court that they couldn't snowball, just because there is a change in the government.
"There are findings of the NHRC on facts, in fact the protestors were attacking. The NHRC's finding is already in our favour; the police is being attacked. Now there is a direction to conduct fresh investigation by the local police which was before the CBI earlier," Sibal argued before the top court.
He also clarified that the protests were going on for 99 days, and section 144 was imposed only after the 100th day.
The High Court in its order had noted that the people were targeted. "We are unable to digest that these kind of things happen. The police will go to any extent. We haven't heard of this," said the Madras High Court.
Criticising the attitude of compensating loss of lives with money and then closing the case, the High Court asked, "Then what justice is there (for the victims)?"
The High Court also slammed Sterlite Copper for running without consent (of the govt authorities concerned) from 2009 to 2014, causing pollution.
"One individual is capable of directly controlling every system, which is bad to society and the common people. This is what we are trying to do away with," added the High Court.
