The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has quashed the chargesheet filed by the CBI against former Inspector General of Police and head of the Idol Wing CID, A. G. Pon Manickavel.
After hearing a petition filed by Pon Manickavel seeking quashing of the case against him, Justice R. N. Manjula observed that, on the face of it, the FIR registered by the CBI against the petitioner does not contain any particulars of the offence allegedly committed by him. The court in its verdict dated on September 26, said that during the pendency of the case, the CBI filed a chargesheet against the petitioner. The FIR filed by the CBI lacked material particulars as it did not contain any details of the alleged offence. The FIR fails the test of legality and acceptability, and so does the chargesheet.
The petitioner, who was the Special Officer heading the team, was made an accused in a case based on the complaint of former Deputy Superintendent of Police, I. Khader Basha, who alleged that Manickavel had falsely implicated him in an idol theft case. Manickavel had added Basha as an accused on charges that he and a few other officers had sold two of the idols recovered by them during their probe, for Rs 15 lakh, in connection with the theft of 13 idols from the Palavoor temple in Tirunelveli. Basha sought a direction to register a case against Manickavel.
In 2022, the court directed the CBI to probe the allegations levelled against Manickavel. The CBI conducted a preliminary inquiry and filed a preliminary report before the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate’s Court in Madurai. Though the FIR was registered based on the preliminary inquiry, the inquiry report was not annexed as part of the FIR. The court rejected the plea by Manickavel seeking copies of the preliminary report, holding that the investigation was pending. Subsequently, the CBI also registered an FIR against Manickavel.
Aggrieved by this, Manickavel moved the High Court against the order passed by the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate seeking copies of the preliminary inquiry report. He also filed another petition seeking to quash the FIR registered against him by the CBI. He argued that a reading of the FIR did not disclose any of the offences registered against him. Manickavel said, “It is a clear case of abuse of the process of law. Basha made a frivolous representation against me and moved court with misleading facts to settle a personal vendetta. The CBI mechanically registered the FIR without even constituting any offences against me.”
The court said that all those actions taken by the petitioner, based on the information obtained by him, were criticised as intentional. It remarked: “If such baseless reports are allowed to be given undue importance, then in every case involving police officials, an opposite syndicate will start to act against the investigating team and try to sabotage the material gathered and filed in court by the investigating team. Such an unhealthy trend will certainly affect the interest of justice.”
Hearing both petitions, Justice Manjula observed that furnishing information about the charges for which the case has been registered against an accused is not just an empty formality, but compliance with the principle of natural justice. In its verdict dated 26 September, the court said that the accused has the right to initiate proceedings to quash the FIR, which he cannot exercise in the absence of the base information through which he was brought into the case.
Hailing the court’s verdict, temple activist T. R. Ramesh said: “The false case foisted against former Inspector General of Police — an upright officer, Pon Manickavel — has been quashed by the Madras High Court. Pon Manickavel, during his tenure, went after idol smugglers relentlessly and unearthed many cases of smuggling of our ancient murtis from temples.”
He added that this false case had been foisted by an idol smuggler and accused, supported by vested interests including an industrialist. “Both DMK and AIADMK governments never wanted the truth to come out in the idol smuggling cases. In fact, 41 case files went missing at the same time from different police stations. They were in collusion in filing this false case,” he said
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