Tamil Nadu - Madurai   

Man gets bail to take care of his ailing son

MADURAI: Moving away from the usual practice of denying bail to persons undergoing preventive detention, the Madras High Court on Wednesday granted interim bail to a suspected black marketeer of ration rice to facilitate his 12-year-old son undergo kidney transplantation at a private hospital here.

A Bench comprising Justices M. Chockalingam and S. Palanivelu granted bail despite the dismissal of a habeas corpus petition filed by his wife to quash the detention order passed by the Tiruchi Police Commissioner under the Prevention of Black Marketing and Maintenance of Supplies of Essential Commodities Act, 1980.

In her second petition filed before the Madurai Bench, she had challenged a Government Order through which the Governor had approved the detention order.

Pending adjudication of the petition, she sought to release her husband on interim bail as their son was suffering from chronic renal failure and living under the support of dialysis.

According to the Police Commissioner, the petitioner’s husband was a habitual offender and was detained in Tiruchi central prison to prevent him from acting in any manner prejudicial to the maintenance or supplies of essential commodities such as rice meant for Public Distribution System.

He said that the sleuths from Civil Supplies-CID raided a rice mill owned by the detainee at Pattukottai on June 8, 2007, and seized 1,727 bags of rice meant for Sampoorna Gramin Rozgar Yojana, a food-for-work scheme of the Central Government.

Subsequently, the police registered another case against the detainee on January 23 for attempting to smuggle 456 bags of PDS rice to a neighbouring State.

Denying the allegations, petitioner’s counsel R. Karuppan claimed that the Commissioner was guilty of perjury because in his counter affidavit filed before the court on February 11 he had stated that the Governor was yet to approve the detention order though such approval was given as early as on February 5 and the G.O. was served on the detainee on February 8.

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