The Madras High Court on Friday dismissed a bail petition filed by Siva Sankar Baba alias C.N. Sivasankaran, 73, in one of the many cases booked against him under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act on the ground that the charges were grave and there was every possibility of him absconding.
Justice T.V. Thamilselvi refused to grant the relief after Additional Public Prosecutor (APP) R. Muniyapparaj submitted a few photographs of Sivasankaran hugging girl children studying in a residential school run by him at Kelambakkam, near the city. The APP said the godman had also sent a few “obscene” messages to them.
“You said he is a divine person. Is this how divine people behave?” the judge asked the petitioner’s counsel after taking a look at the photographs. The counsel claimed that the photographs were morphed, but the APP replied that those things could be gone into only after sending the photos for forensic examination and that the investigation was now at a preliminary stage.
The prosecution told the court that complaints were pouring in from former students of the school, and even on Thursday, a new complaint had been received by the Crime Branch-Criminal Investigation Department. He said former students, now residing in foreign countries and other States, had begun to lodge complaints through e-mails.
On the other hand, the petitioner’s counsel claimed that a conspiracy was being hatched by a group of people to grab 64 acres of land on which the school was situated. Stating that the school was established through donations from devotees, he said a series of false complaints were being lodged to keep the petitioner incarcerated and take away the properties.
The counsel also accused the CB-CID of soliciting complaints. He urged the court to consider granting bail to the petitioner by taking his age and ailments into account. However, the judge, after hearing both sides, said she was not inclined to grant bail in view of the nature of the complaint, and the fact that the petitioner was a self-proclaimed godman.
