The six accused in the Assembly ruckus case, including Minister for General Education V. Sivankutty, will have to appear before the Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM), Thiruvananthapuram, on September 15 for the court to frame charges in the case.
Refusing the request of the accused seeking more time for appearing before the court, R. Rekha, Chief Judicial Magistrate, on Wednesday issued an ultimatum that all the six accused shall be personally present in the court on the day.
Though the accused argued that their petitions challenging the earlier order of the magistrate rejecting the discharge petition was pending before the Kerala High Court, the CJM said the case cannot be prolonged indefinitely. The court pointed out that the High Court had not stayed the CJM’s order. She also pointed out that the case had come up before the trial court in 2019.
The court will read out the charges framed against the accused on September 14 to set the trial process in motion.
Besides Mr. Sivankutty, K.T. Jaleel, MLA; Left Democratic Front convener E.P. Jayarajan; and former MLAs K. Ajith, K. Kunjahamad and C. K. Sadasivan are the other accused in the case.
The case
The case relates to the destruction the six, who were then in the Opposition, had caused to the property inside the Assembly while obstructing the then Finance Minister K. M. Mani from presenting the annual Budget on March 13, 2015. The unruly incidents began with the MLAs climbing over the Speaker’s dais. They had damaged the chair of the Speaker, the computer, mike, and emergency lamp on the dais in an attempt to prevent Mani from presenting the Budget.
However, the Finance Minister presented the Budget in a huff by reading out a few sentences from the Budget speech.
Pecuniary loss
The case against the six accused is that they had caused a pecuniary loss of ₹2.20 lakh in the ruckus. The accused were charged with trespass and causing destruction to public property.
The discharge petitions filed by the accused were rejected by the Magistrate court earlier.
The Supreme Court had also pulled up the accused as they challenged the order of the High Court, which upheld the decision of the Magistrate court in rejecting the discharge petition.
