The Hindu : No charges framed against Vaiko, case adjourned

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Apr 08, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu

No charges framed against Vaiko, case adjourned

By K. Subramanian

KANCHEEPURAM April 7. Charges against the MDMK general secretary, Vaiko, and eight others, arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act were not framed today. L. Rajendran, judge of the special court at Poonamalle near Chennai posted the case for April 24. He said the Supreme Court was still seized of the petition filed by Mr.Vaiko challenging the validity of Section 21 of the Act.

When the case came up for hearing, the defence counsel, K. S. Dinakaran, said the Supreme Court was yet to decide on Mr. Vaiko's petition and hence, arguments could not be taken up on the discharge petitions filed by the accused (except Mr. Vaiko) on March 17. The judge said he was not empowered to decide on the validity of the Act as the apex court was already hearing a petition filed by Mr. Vaiko.

As directed by the judge in the last hearing, the special public prosecutor, S. Jayakumar, today filed counter on the discharge applications submitted by the MDMK district secretaries, Ganesamurthy, Veera Ilavarasan, Bhoominathan and Pulavar Sevanthiappan; the former MLA, P. S. Manian; the advocate, Alagusundaram; Nagarajan and Madurai Ganesan. The prosecution said at the stage of framing charges, the court had to consider whether there was sufficient ground for prosecuting the accused. If the court was satisfied that a prima facie case was made out, charges had to be framed.

On the defence contention that the video coverage text of the meeting furnished was not a verbatim one of the videograph, the prosecution said there were ``some minor variations'' between the text furnished and the videocassette of the speeches. But the variations did not lead to any material variations especially when the cassette containing the exact speech delivered by the accused itself was given to them.

Hence, no prejudice was caused to the accused. With regard to the defence contention that the purpose of the meeting at Tirumangalam near Madurai on June 29 last was only to mark the MDMK's ninth anniversary and hence no case could be made out under section 21 (3), the prosecution said the meeting was conducted under the pretext of celebrating the party's anniversary, but the intention of the accused was to espouse the cause of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The guilty intentions of the accused were clear from their participation in public meetings immediately prior to the said meeting wherein they had spoken espousing the cause of the banned Tigers.

Speaking to presspersons Mr. Vaiko urged the State Government to give up the idea of demolishing the Queen Mary's College to build a new Secretariat and called for the preservation of the college as a `heritage monument'.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Southern States

Stories in this Section

Salaries raised for district, civil judges

ESIC plans new policy to include more workers

Rain ends Ooty dry spell

Lively sparring over Krishna

Better food for sub-jail prisoners

`No bias in negative replies'

MLA sans office

CM takes up fishermen's woes with Chandrika

Vellaiyan, two others released on bail

Madurai, Coimbatore benches for organ transplant panel

No charges framed against Vaiko, case adjourned