The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Detention of Raghu, 10 others quashed

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Friday, May 06, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Detention of Raghu, 10 others quashed

Staff Reporter

``Goondas Act orders mechanically passed'' "It is the potentiality of the act to disturb even tempo of life of the community which makes it prejudicial to the maintenance of public order."

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court on Thursday quashed the detention of 11 persons, including M.K. Raghu, N. Sundaresa Iyer and Appu, under the Goondas Act. The orders were passed "mechanically," it held and directed that the detenus be set at liberty forthwith.

A Division Bench, comprising Justice M. Karpagavinayagam and Justice C. Nagappan, allowed a batch of habeas corpus petitions and ruled that there was no material to conclude that the detenus disturbed the public order.

The case, based on which the Kancheepuram Collector passed the order, was the murder of Sankararaman, manager of the Varadaraja Perumal temple, on September 3, 2004.

The other case cited was the assault on S. Radhakrishnan of Mandaveli.

The orders said the detenus were acting in a manner prejudicial to the maintenance of the public order, thereby creating fear, panic and a feeling of insecurity in the people. The petitioners assailed the orders stating "public order" was not applicable in the instant case and that they had been passed without the application of mind. At the most, the alleged acts would be detrimental to the maintenance of law and order, relating to crimes against individuals, they added.

Agreeing with the contention, the judges said: "We are unable to find any material either through documents or through statements from the public to show that due to the ground incident (murder) there has been a feeling of insecurity among the people, who are residents of the local area. Similarly, not a single material has been placed before the detaining authority to indicate that even [the] tempo of life was affected or that people in the locality felt insecure or that there was public disorder. ... In the absence of any material to show that there was a disturbance of public order in the public place, we are at a loss to understand as to how the detaining authority would pass uniform detention orders."

Pointing out that even according to the police only two persons entered the temple and hacked Sankararaman, the judges faulted the Collector for having passed the order under the impression that all the detenus were at the spot. "It is clear that the conclusion arrived at by the detaining authority as mentioned in the grounds of detention totally contradicts the case of the sponsoring authority."

On the State senior counsel, K.T.S. Tulsi's argument that the murder "shocked the moral and religious sentiments of crores of people," the Bench said, "We are afraid this contention cannot be countenanced. ... Unless the detaining authority relies upon some materials to come to the conclusion that the ground case shocked the moral and religious sentiments of crores of people, this court cannot infer these things."

The detenus ordered released are Raghu, Sundaresa Iyer, Appu alias K.G. Krishnasamy, Kathiravan, Meenakshisundaram, K.S. Kumar, Chinna, D. Anil, Baskar, Anandkumar and Stalin.

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