The Madras High Court on Thursday, May 23, 2024 directed the Greater Chennai City Commissioner of Police Sandeep Rai Rathore to produce the entire file relating to the invocation of Goondas Act against YouTuber ‘Savukku’ Shankar alias A. Shankar pursuant to his arrest on May 4.
Summer vacation Bench of Justices G.R. Swaminathan and P.B. Balaji asked Advocate General P.S. Raman to make sure that the file was submitted by 2.15 pm on the same day so that the court could peruse it and be satisfied that there were sufficient grounds to invoke the preventive detention law.
The judges refrained from passing the usual order of ordering notice, returnable in six weeks, in the habeas corpus petitions which challenge the invocation of preventive detention laws and instead insisted on perusing the entire file in the HCP filed by Shankar’s mother A. Kamala.
They also insisted that the file should be produced before the court on the same day. The Commissioner of Police had passed the detention order on May 12 after Shankar was arrested by the Coimbatore police in Theni on charges of having made derogatory statements against women police personnel.
Subsequently, he was arrested in multiple other cases booked against him in Chennai and Theni. In an affidavit filed along with the HCP, his mother alleged that the preventive detention law had been invoked against her son due to malafide intention as he was a strong critic of the State government and the police.
The petitioner said that multiple cases were foisted on her son to incarcerate him, and there was a “dubious” road accident when he was transported from Theni to Coimbatore pursuant to his arrest on May 4. She further said that the prison authorities had brutally attacked her son leading to a fracture on his right arm.
Since she had also filed a writ petition seeking a National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) inquiry into the assault, the Division Bench decided to hear that writ petition too in the afternoon.
