The Madras High Court has directed a Special Court for CBI cases to dispose of a case relating to leak of question papers in the Tamil Nadu Uniformed Services Recruitment Board in 2005 within four months.
Dismissing criminal revision petitions filed by J.Duraimunusamy and five others who were accused in that case, Justice S.Tamilvanan, said Additional Special Judge for CBI Cases, Chennai, should dispose of the case without seeking further extension of time, solely on merit and uninfluenced by the order of dismissal of the revision petitions.
The revision petitions sought to discharge the petitioners/accused from the charges framed against them.
The prosecution case was that J.Durai Munusamy entered in to a criminal conspiracy with Chinnathambi during 2005 to cheat TNUSRB in the matter and fraudulently obtained a question paper for the PC exam in advance. Several others too received copies of the question paper in advance and some accused received monetary consideration for supplying it.
According to the petitioners, a senior police officer, Radhakrishnan, the then member secretary of the Tamil Nadu Uniformed Services Recruitment Board, was an accused in both the FIRs relating to the year 2005. However, he was dropped and his name does not find a place in the charge sheet prepared in 2006. He was stated as one of the main sources of the alleged leak as per the earlier FIR.
The judge said, however, the public prosecutor submitted that after the investigation it was found that there was no prima facie material against some of the persons, who were originally arraigned as accused, including Mr. Radhakrishnan.
Mr.Justice Tamilvanan said that dropping some of the accused by the prosecution without proper reason from the charge sheet cannot be accepted. However, the same cannot be a ground to discharge the other accused. In the light of the various decisions of the Supreme Court, it has been made crystal clear that the prosecution case and probative value of the materials cannot be gone into by the trial court while framing the charges under Section 228 of the Criminal Procedure Code for discharge under Section 227 of the Code.
