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HC admits habeas corpus plea to free DMK MLAs

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, APRIL 11. The Madras High Court today admitted a habeas corpus petition seeking to set at liberty six DMK MLAs, including the former Chennai Mayor, M.K. Stalin, and ordered notice to the Director-General of Police and the Chennai City Commissioner of Police.

A Division Bench, comprising Justice P. Shanmugam and Justice S.K. Krishnan, ordered notices, on a petition filed by S.M. Abdul Khadar, son of S.A.M. Hussain, one of the six MLAs, and posted the matter to April 17.

The petitioner alleged that the police, who had arrested Mr. Stalin and the other MLAs in the `most inhuman manner', failed to produce the case diary and report on the initial investigation to the magistrate. Claiming that well-established norms to be followed during the arrest of an accused had been given the go by, Mr. Khadar said the midnight arrests and subsequent 15-day remand lacked justification and material.

He prayed for a direction to produce the MLAs — Mr. Stalin, Mr. Hussain, K. Ponmudi, J. Anbazhagan, E.V. Velu and L. Pugazhandi — before the court.

Moving the lunch motion before the Bench, counsel for the petitioner, Sankarasubbu, even alleged that while the complaint preferred by the Queen Mary's College principal was dated April 9, the first information report bore the date of April 8.

The FIR had come into existence even before the complaint, he claimed.

There was no quarrel about the police power to arrest the accused, but there should be clinching justification for exercising it, he said. Mr. Stalin and the others were not informed of the grounds of their arrest and the magistrate was also not furnished an FIR copy and witness statements before the remand order was made.

However, the public prosecutor, I. Subramanian, contended that the police had completed every pre-arrest formality and the magistrate was also satisfied with the materials produced by the police for remand.

The Bench, then ordered notices and posted the matter to April 17 for hearing.

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