The Madras High Court on Monday granted four more weeks to the State government to file a status report on the inquiry being conducted by retired judge M. Sathyanarayanan, into the incident of human faeces found in an overhead tank that supplied water to Scheduled Caste residents of Vengaivayal village in Pudukkottai district in December last year.
Chief Justice S.V. Gangapurwala and Justice P.D. Audikesavalu told Additional Advocate General J. Ravindran that three months had already gone by since the court appointed the one-man commission led by the retired judge on March 29, and hence this would be the last opportunity granted to the government for filing of the status report.
The AAG told the court that the retired judge had already visited Vengaivayal twice and that he would definitely file the report during the next hearing.
The petitioners’ counsel complained to the court that no tangible progress had been made either in the police or the judicial hearing though more than six months had lapsed since the incident took place. Advocate K. Rajkamal and Marx Raveendran alias V. Raveendran had filed individual public interest litigation petitions before the High Court seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the incident after expressing dissatisfaction with the Crime Branch-Criminal Investigation Department (CB-CID) for its failure to arrest even a single individual.
While passing interim orders in these cases on March 29, the then first Bench comprising Acting Chief Justice T. Raja (since retired) and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy had appointed the one-man commission to inquire into the matter and submit a report to the court.
