Thursday, November 28, 2019

High Court summons Home Secretary

‘Explain delay in releasing life convicts’

28/11/2019, MOHAMED IMRANULLAH S.,CHENNAI

The Madras High Court has summoned Home Secretary Niranjan Mardi to explain the delay in releasing five life convicts despite specific orders passed by a Division Bench of the court between December 7, 2018 and January 25 to release them forthwith by according the benefit of premature release granted to many other convicts in the State.

Justices M.M. Sundresh and RMT. Teekaa Raman said they had no choice but to issue statutory notices (requiring the presence of the Home Secretary in the court next month) in all the five contempt of court petitions filed against him since their patience had run thin after having granted enough time to release the convicts.

The judges had been granting time for the government to comply with the court orders ever since the contempt of court petitions were filed in July.

However, when the contempt petitions were taken up on Wednesday, the government was not able to report whether the Supreme Court had granted any interim relief. Therefore, the judges chose to direct the High Court Registry to issue statutory notices to the Home Secretary insisting upon his appearance after four weeks.

It was actually a Bench of Justices C.T. Selvam (since retired) and S. Ramathilagam (who had also retired from service now), which had ordered the release of the five convicts by according the benefit of a government order issued in 2018 to release many life convicts to mark the birth centenary of former Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran.

Then, the government had refused to release P. Sakthivel (37) from Coimbatore prison since he had been convicted under the Explosive Substances Act of 1908, apart from the charge of murder under the Indian Penal Code.

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