The Madras High Court on Wednesday wound up the hearing on a suo motu revision petition taken up by it in August 2023 against the October 2022 discharge of Revenue Minister K.K.S.S.R. Ramachandran, by a trial court, from a 2011 disproportionate assets case.
Justice N. Anand Venkatesh, however, decided to reserve the judgement after completing the hearing in similar suo motu revision petitions taken up against the discharge of Finance Minister Thangam Thennarasu and former Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam too.
After senior counsel S. Murlidhar and N.R. Elango completed arguments in the revision against Mr. Ramachandran, the judge directed the High Court Registry to list the case on Thursday for senior counsel A. Ramesh to make his final submissions in Mr. Thennarasu’s case.
All three suo motu revisions were clubbed due to the common legal issues to be decided in them. Since Advocate General P.S. Raman had already argued for the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti Corruption (DVAC), the judge said, the verdict would be reserved shortly.
Reassuring the counsel that they were arguing before a neutral judge who would not hesitate to even close the suo motu revision petitions if he found the procedures to have been followed scrupulously, the judge said, the trigger for the revisions was a pattern seen in cases involving persons in power.
He pointed out that in all the three disproportionate asset cases, he found the DVAC to have filed a charge sheet against the accused when they had been dislodged from the post of Minister but subsequently given a clean chit to them, by conducting further investigation, after they assumed power.
Stating that this kind of further investigation was seldom done by the investigating agencies in any other corruption case but for those involving politicians, the judge said, he could, however, not order a trial in these cases for the sole reason that the accused happened to be people in power.
If there were plausible reasons for the DVAC to have conducted further investigation and given a clean chit to the Ministers, then they must not be disturbed, the judge said and decided to look into the materials collected by the agency as well as the trial court judgements very carefully.
The judge also said that, irrespective of the outcome of the suo motu revision petitions, a strong message would certainly go out that the criminal justice system could not be subverted and that any irregularity, especially by persons in power, would be questioned by someone at some point of time.
Published - June 19, 2024 07:51 pm IST
