The Madras High Court on Friday closed a petition filed by Legislative Assembly Speaker M. Appavu in 2019 to quash a land grabbing case registered against him. It recorded the submission of police that it had already filed a negative final report before the lower court concerned.
Justice A.D. Jagadish Chandira said there was no necessity to pass orders on the Speaker’s plea to quash the First Information Report (FIR) since the Tirunelveli District Crime Branch had completed the investigation and filed a final report terming the case a “mistake of fact.”
The judge, however, granted liberty to the complainant S. Dhamotharan to file a protest petition, against the negative final report, in accordance with law. The complaint was related to 10 cents of land at Perungudi village in Radhapuram Taluk of Tirunelveli district. The complainant had claimed to have inherited the property from his father. However, Mr. Appavu, in his quash petition, said he had purchased the property from a woman Pitchammal in 2006. Only in 2016, he came to know that the woman did not have a clear title.
Therefore, the Speaker said he had relinquished all his rights over the property in 2016 by way of a deed, and hence, he was not its owner since then. However, the complainant, with ulterior motive, had approached a special court for land grabbing cases in 2019, he pointed out.
Submitting that the complainant was his close relative, who was being used by his political opponents, Mr. Appavu said, the charge of land grab would not get attracted at all when he was a bona fide purchaser of the property back in 2006. It was also brought to the notice of the court that the complainant himself was facing a couple of land grabbing cases and his credentials were questionable.
