The Madras High Court on Friday reserved its orders on an appeal preferred by the State against the bail granted to Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) Rajya Sabha member and the party’s Organising Secretary R.S. Bharathi by a special court in a case booked under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989.
Justice N. Sathish Kumar deferred the verdict after expressing his displeasure over allegations of a Parliamentarian, that too one with an experience of 40 years as a lawyer, having given credit to his political party for the elevation of lawyers from the Scheduled Castes as High Court judges. He said the MP must exercise restraint while making public speeches.
“He should introspect as to what the society will think about the judiciary. Won’t people think that if you know some politician, you can easily become a judge?” he said after the conclusion of arguments advanced by senior counsel R. Shunmugasundaram representing the MP, advocate V. Raghavachari for the complainant and Additional Public Prosecutor K. Prabakar.
The APP told the court that the charges levelled against the MP were very serious since he had spoken ill about members of the Scheduled Castes as well as judges who had made it to the top due to their sheer hard work and ability. Yet without going into the merits of the case, the special court had granted bail considering the threat of COVID-19, he complained.
Mr. Prabakar also argued that if the MP ends up claiming that he never made any such speech at a meeting organised by Kalaignar Reading Circle in Chennai on February 15, then the prosecution would have to take his voice sample and compare it with the electronic evidence. Such a process may not be necessary if he admits having made the speech, he added.
On his part, Mr. Raghavachari, representing the complainant S.T. Kalyana Sundaram of Aadhi Tamilar Makkal Katchi, said, the special court ought to have seen that complaints lodged under the SC/ST Act must be considered very serious especially pursuant to the amendments made to it in 2018. He said the MP was in the habit of making defamatory remarks against different caste groups.
In reply, Mr. Shunmugasundaram accused the complainant of having turned a volte face after having made an open statement before the special court that he was not against grant of bail to the MP. That statement had been recorded in the special court’s order, he said and claimed that the transcription of the MP’s speech produced by the prosecution was “totally faulty.”
Asserting that the MP had no intention of either insulting or denigrating anyone, the senior counsel said a First Information Report had been registered against him only because of the animosity that the State had been harbouring against because he had filed multiple cases in the High Court accusing the Chief Minister as well as other Ministers in his cabinet of corruption.
“This is purely a malafide action on the part of the State and therefore, there is no need for entertaining the appeal,” he told the court. The senior counsel also pointed out that the offences for which the MP had been booked, as of now, would attract a maximum punishment of only five years and not 10 years as claimed by the other side before the court.
