The Madras High Court on Monday granted anticipatory bail to some of the co-accused in two out of three cases booked so far against self-styled godman Sivashankaran alias Siva Shankar Baba on charges of having sexually abused girl children of a residential school on the outskirts of Chennai.
Justice M. Dhandapani granted advance bail to Deepa Venkataramanan in two cases. The other co-accused R. Karunambikai, Dhivya Balasubramanian and Neeraja Jayaraman were granted bail in one of the three cases. All the petitioners were ordered to surrender their passports before the lower court concerned.
The judge also ordered that the petitioners must appear before the investigating officer every day for two weeks. The advance bail was granted after senior counsel A. Ramesh and advocate D. Selvam argued that there were hardly any materials to implicate the petitioners in the alleged crime.
The counsel said there were no direct allegations against the petitioners either in the First Information Report or in the victims’ statements recorded under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. They said the petitioners had been arrayed as the co-accused solely because they happened to be staff of the residential school founded by Sivashankaran.
They also pointed out that one of the present complaints against the petitioner had been lodged by a former student of the school for an incident that allegedly took place in 2012.
On the other hand, Government Counsel Raj Thilak told the court that so far three FIRs had been booked against the prime accused and statements had been obtained from four victims. Many more former students were in touch with the police and wanted to lodge complaints. If anticipatory bail was granted to the present petitioners at this stage, it would deter others from approaching the police, he said.
However, the judge said such considerations could not be taken into account to deny bail to people against whom there were no direct allegations in the Section 164 statements. He also closed two other anticipatory bail petitions filed by Janaki Srinivasan, through her counsel M. Mohamed Riyaz, after recording the submission of the police that she was not an accused in any of the three cases booked so far.
The woman had approached the court since her name was linked to the crime in media reports.
