The Tamil Nadu government has moved the Supreme Court against a Madras High Court judgment quashing the establishment of special police cells and courts to investigate and try “land grabbing cases” in the State.
The February 10 judgment of the High Court held that anti-land grabbing special cells set up by the government would give rise to a “possibility of abuse and misuse of power by the officers while registering FIRs and proceeding with investigation regarding complaints of land grabbing”.
In its special leave petition before the Supreme Court filed through advocate B. Balaji, the Tamil Nadu government countered that the reasoning of the High Court was “completely contrary to the law” laid by the apex court.
The State argued that the Supreme Court has made it clear that “mere possibility of abuse of the law is not a ground to strike down any legislation or for that matter any government order”.
The Tamil Nadu government argued that High Court should not have stressed on a specific definition for the term “land grabbing”. It said the expression 'land grabbing' has to be understood in consonance with Sections 447 (criminal trespass), 420 (cheating) and 506 (criminal intimidation), which are well-defined offences under the Indian Penal Code.
The petition questioned the High Court's apprehensions that prejudice is likely to be caused to an accused if he is separately tried by the Anti-Land Grabbing Special Courts. The State said these special courts were meant to speed up the trial. The government faulted the High Court's reasoning that once the special anti-land grabbing cells were to done away with, there was no further use of the special court constituted to try the same cases.
The entire controversy surrounds on two government orders issued successively by the State in 2011.
In the first order of July 2011, the State Home Department formed 36 anti-land grabbing cells with one cell each at the State Police Headquarters, seven commissionrates and 28 districts, except in Karur, Tiruvannamalai and Nagappattinam.
The second order of August 2011 related to the formation of 25 special courts in the State including two in Chennai city, excepting eight mofussil districts where number of land grabbing cases are very low: Vellore, Tiruvannamalai, Ariyalur, Tiruvarur, Nagapattinam, Sivagangai, Kanniyakumari and Dindigul.
Madras High Court had quashed State's special police cells to probe land-grabbing cases
