A special three-judge bench of the Madras High Court on Wednesday reserved its orders on the maintainability of a writ petition filed in 2017 challenging a ban imposed by the State government in 2015 on Tamil book ‘Madurai Veeranin Unmai Varalaru’, besides ordering forfeiture of all copies of the book.
The bench comprising Justices D. Krishnakumar, C.V. Karthikeyan and P. Dhanabal was of the view that the matter could be heard by it only if the author, Kulandai alias Kulandairaj, had filed a petition under Section 96 of the Code of Criminal Procedure challenging the forfeiture order passed under Section 95 of the Code.
However, since the author had chosen to file only a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution, such a case could be heard only by a single judge of the High Court and not by a three-judge bench as required under Section 96 of the Cr.P.C., the judges said and wanted to know whether the petitioner would file a fresh petition.
