Observing that extraordinary situations call for extraordinary remedy, the Madras High Court Bench here on Friday exercised its writ jurisdiction to grant bail to Dalit writer Durai Guna and his friend Boopathi Karthikeyan in a 2015 assault case utilised by the police to pre-empt their release despite bail granted to them by a Judicial Magistrate in a similar case booked recently.
Passing interim orders on a habeas corpus petition filed by the complainant in the recent case, Justices K.K. Sasidharan and B. Gokuldas said: “Though the First Information Report is pending from 2015 onwards, the police have not arrested any of the accused. It is only when the detenu in this case moved for bail in the recent case, they have effected arrest with a view to prevent him from coming out from jail.
“Even though there are other accused (in the 2015 case), they have not been arrested. This shows the mala fide in the action taken by the police to keep the accused inside the prison some how or the other… We are therefore of the view that in order to protect the human rights of the detenus, appropriate orders should be passed in this petition in the interest of justice.”
Ultimately, the judges directed the Superintendent of the Sub Jail at Pudukottai to release both the prisoners on execution of a personal bond and on condition that they should report the Judicial Magistrate at Alangudi in Pudukottai district every Friday for one month beginning from June 24.They were also ordered to be present in the High Court during the hearing of the HCP on Monday.
The orders were passed after advocate P. Rathinam, counsel for the petitioner T. Sivanatham, filed an interlocutory petition seeking high court’s intervention to prevent aberration of justice. The lawyer claimed that the Judicial Magistrate promptly granted bail to the two accused in the recent case on Thursday in compliance of another interim order passed in the HCP on Wednesday.
However, the Tamil writer and his friend were not released from prison citing their arrest in the 2015 case, he complained after pointing out that the present HCP had actually been filed by none other than the complainant in the recent case accusing the inspector of Karambakudi police station of having fabricated the complaint after obtaining his signature on a blank paper.
