The listing of around 1,250 First Information Report (FIR) quash petitions before Justice G. Jayachandran of the Madras High Court on Wednesday created anxiety among lawyers who feared that the judge had decided to dismiss all of them en masse by citing the Supreme Court’s verdict in Neeharika Infrastructure Pvt Ltd Versus State of Maharashtra (2021).
Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry (BCTNP) members R.C. Paul Kanagaraj and K. Balu made a mention before the judge, on behalf of the Bar, early in the day and expressed their apprehensions. They requested the judge to look into each petition individually since the facts differed from case to case and take a call accordingly.
However, the judge told the lawyers that their apprehensions were baseless and that he was not going to dismiss the petitions en masse. He clarified that all petitions were listed for hearing in order to find out how many of them fit into the parameters laid down by the Supreme Court for seeking the relief of quashing FIRs and how many do not fall under those parameters.
