Strongly disapproving of delaying tactics adopted by all the 17 accused in the 2007 Tamil daily Dinakaran office attack case here, the Madras High Court (Madurai Bench) on Tuesday warned counsel of the accused of disciplinary action if they failed to cooperate in conducting the proceedings.
When the appeal filed by the CBI challenging the acquittal of the accused by the trial court in December 2009 came up for hearing, a Bench of Justices S. Nagamuthu and V.S. Ravi concurred with the prosecution counsel that the accused had been adopting one tactic or the other to delay the hearing since 2011.
Special Public Prosecutor for CBI cases S. Jeyakumar said the accused had been concentrating only on obtaining adjournments for the last five years, though he was ready to argue in the appeal filed in July 2010 and numbered in March 2011 after condoning a delay of 118 days.
Agreeing with his submissions, Mr. Justice Nagamuthu pointed out that the appeal had been placed before as many as 10 Division Benches in the last five years and during every hearing the accused had managed to get an adjournment by either withdrawing lawyers engaged by them or seeking time in the guise of having engaged new lawyers to appear on behalf of them. “Our Bench has cleared all criminal appeals filed in this court till 2012. This is the only 2011 appeal pending at present. Hence, we appointed a Legal Aid counsel to appear for those who were not represented by their counsels. But after that, some of the accused engaged their own counsels and began seeking adjournments after adjournments on one pretext or the other,” the judge lamented. He adjourned the case finally to November 17.
The newspaper office here was attacked on May 9, 2007 pursuant to publication of the results of a survey in which DMK president M. Karunanidhi’s younger son M.K. Stalin reportedly emerged as the preferred choice to be his political heir than the elder son M.K. Alagiri.
