The Madras High Court Bench here on Friday refused to rehear a public interest litigation (PIL) petition filed against appointment of T.K. Rajendran as Director of General of Police (DGP).
The petition had questioned his appointment on the day of his superannuation on June 30 and consequent permission granted to him to continue in office for two more years despite a gutkha scam having taken place during his tenure as Commissioner of Police, Chennai City between October 2015 and September 2016.
A Division Bench of Justices K.K. Sasidharan and G.R. Swaminathan, which had reserved its verdict on the PIL petition after elaborate arguments on Monday, rejected a request made by the petitioner’s counsel A. Kannan to rehear the case in the light of latest news reports of the Income Tax Department officials having submitted documents related to the scam in August last to then Chief Secretary P.S. Rama Mohana Rao and Director General of Police Ashok Kumar in person.
Referring to a submission made in the court by incumbent Chief Secretary Girija Vaidyanathan that no communication from the I-T department had been received by her office on July 9 last as alleged by the petitioner, counsel accused the Chief Secretary of having misled the court. However, Mr. Justice Sasidharan told him that the court cannot rehear a case on the basis of newspaper reports and granted him liberty to produce any incriminating document in his possession. “I-T department has given us the documents. We will verify them. You can be rest assured that we will answer that question (related to alleged misrepresentation by the Chief Secretary) also in our judgement since you have raised it now. If you have any other documents, you can produce them even now but not the newspaper reports,” the judge told the counsel.
On Monday, Advocate General R. Muthukumaraswamy denied receipt of any kind of communication by the State government from the Income Tax (IT) department in July last in connection with the gutkha scam.
