The Madras High Court on Thursday granted bail to former Minister D. Jayakumar of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) in an attempt to murder case booked against him after a video went viral on the social media where he was seen forcing a Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) cadre to remove his shirt and parading him half naked after suspecting him to have come to cast bogus votes on the urban local bodies poll day.
Justice A.D. Jagadish Chandira granted the relief on condition that the former Minister must stay in Tiruchi for two weeks and sign before the Cantonment Police Station on every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Senior Counsel Sanjay R. Hegde and A. Natarajan had been engaged to argue the bail plea for the petitioner since it was expected that the prosecution might oppose the plea tooth and nail leading to heated arguments.
Even the judge had passed over the hearing of the case after other bail petitions since he thought that the arguments would go on for long. However, the prosecution sprung a surprise by making a submission right at the beginning of the hearing that the bail plea could be considered by directing the petitioner to file an affidavit that he would not repeat such instances in the future. The judge appreciated the prosecution for having taken a fair stand.
When Mr. Natarajan brought it to the notice of the judge that a lower court had in another case directed the petitioner to appear before the police in Chennai every day for two weeks, Justice Chandira said, the High Court’s order would prevail over. Now that the former Minister had obtained bail in two out of the three cases, he would be able to step out of the prison only after obtaining bail in the third case too.
In his petition before the High Court, the former Minister had said that the DMK cadre was forced to remove his shirt on the day of urban local bodies polls in the State because the latter was a “hard core criminal” facing 11 criminal cases and hence there was every chance of him carrying a weapon either in the hip or inside his shirt.
He also claimed that the shirt was used to tie the hands of Naresh Kumar, who was suspected to be involved in bogus voting, and thereafter, he was taken half-naked to be handed over to the police. The police, however, let off the DMK cadre without any action, he complained.
He pointed out that Section 43 of the Code of Criminal Procedure authorises private individuals too to arrest a person found to be committing a cognisable offence and hand him over to the police.
He, further said the initial First Information Report registered against him contained only one non bailable section (506 part II – punishment for criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code. However, Section 307 (attempt to murder) of the IPC was added much later to prevent him from obtaining bail from a Judicial Magistrate.
The petitioner also claimed that the complainant had got himself admitted in a government hospital without sustaining any injuries and said the Accident Register did not have any mention about the nature of injuries. He stated that the DMK cadre was not getting discharged from the hospital only to defeat the benefit of bail to the petitioner.
