N. Suresh Babu alias 'Pottu' Suresh (43), a confidant of Union Minister M.K. Alagiri, has filed a petition in the Madras High Court Bench challenging the permission granted by a judicial magistrate here on Tuesday to take him under police custody for three days in a case registered by the Central Crime Branch police here.
In the petition, filed through his counsel Veera Kathiravan, he claimed that the magistrate had wrongly permitted custodial interrogation as the 15 days period (from the date of arrest) within which police custody could be sought for had already expired. The petitioner claimed to have been remanded and sent to judicial custody as early as on August 25.
He recalled that the Supreme Court in various cases had stated that police custody could not be sought for after the expiry of the first 15 days in judicial custody. “In this case, the first judicial custody of 15 days got completed on September 7. The learned magistrate has no power to order for police custody after the expiry of 15 days. The order passed by the magistrate is illegal,” the petition read.
