After a two-year legal wrangle, Fr. S. Michael Raj, spokesman of the Diocese of Sivaganga, heaved a sigh of relief as the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has quashed the proceedings, pending before the Judicial Magistrate Court here, for the ‘illegal ferrying’ of a Sri Lankan Tamil woman and her child from Katchatheevu after a church festival in March 2012.
The Q Branch registered a case against Fr. Raj, who was then Parish Priest of Rameswaram and chief organiser of the annual festival at St. Antony’s Church, five fishermen who were the boat crew members and the woman on charges of illegally ferrying her from Katchatheevu to Rameswaram, violating Section 14 of the Foreigners Act.
After Usha, 33, who arrived here with her four-year-old daughter Neera, pleaded guilty, the court awarded her a one-year sentence but set it off against the period she had served in the Tiruchi jail and later in the quarantine ward of the Mandapam refugee camp. However, the police arraigned Fr. Raj and the five fishermen as accused, when they filed the charge sheet in August last year.
When the trial started in September last, Fr. Raj moved the Madurai Bench for quashing the proceedings, arguing that the Director-General of Police himself had written to the then Superintendent of Police, asking that the case be dropped, and that he had not illegally ferried the woman and her child.
