The Madras High Court on Wednesday reserved its verdict on a habeas corpus petition filed by the 2017 Kodanad estate heist-cum-murder case accused K.V. Sayan, 37, of Kerala, challenging a preventive detention order passed by Nilgiris Collector on March 21 for detaining him under the Goondas Act.
Justices M.M. Sundresh and RMT. Teekaa Raman deferred their verdict after hearing arguments advanced on behalf of the petitioner as well as the Collector.
In his affidavit, the petitioner had alleged that the detention order had been passed only because he had implicated Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami in the crime. “The order has been passed only to silence me from initiating further allegations against the honourable Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu Thiru Edappadi K. Palaniswami. Hence, the order of detention is attended with malafides,” the affidavit read.
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Counter affidavit
However, in her counter affidavit, Collector J. Innocent Divya denied all those allegations and claimed that the detention order was passed since the petitioner was involved in a series of crimes and he had attempted to mislead the court and indirectly tamper with the evidence in the 2017 heist case by giving false interviews against the Chief Minister in the media.