Chennai, March 3 (BPNS)
Madras High Court on Thursday granted conditional bail to former minister and AIADMK leader, D. Jayakumar in an attempt to murder case charged against him. This was following a video of the former minister catching hold of a DMK cadre and parading him half-naked near a polling booth accusing him of coming to cast a bogus vote during the urban local body polls on February 19th going viral.
Justice A.D. Jagadish Chandra granted him bail on condition that the former minister must remain stayed at Tiruchi and sign before the Cantonment police station on every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
The judge had posted the matter as the last case fearing that the argument might go for long but the prosecution surprised everyone by making a submission at the commencement of the hearing that the bail plea be considered by directing the petitioner to file an affidavit stating that he would not repeat such things in future.
The council of Jayakumar, A. Natarajan appealed to the High court that a lower court had directed his client to appear before police in Chennai every day for two weeks, the court said that the order of the High court would prevail over.
However, the former minister will be able to come out of prison if he obtains bail in a third case that was slapped against him on the election day violence.
In his appeal before the High Court, Jayakumar petitioned that the DMK cadre’s shirt was removed on the apprehension that he was carrying a weapon within his dress or in hip as he was a hard-core criminal with 11 criminal cases against him.
The former minister also argued that the shirt was used to tie the hands of Naresh Kumar who was suspected to be involved in bogus voting and he was taken to the police for bogus voting but the police let him off without charging a case.
He also pointed out that Section 43 of the Criminal Procedure Code authorizes private individuals also to arrest a person found to be committing a cognizable offense and hand him over to the police.
Jayakumar said that the DMK cadre was admitted to a government hospital without sustaining any injuries and said that the Accident register did not have any mention of the injuries. The former minister also said that he was continuing in the hospital only to defeat the benefit of bail plea of the petitioner.
The AIADMK leader further said that the first initial FIR against him had only one bailable section, (506 part 11 –punishment for criminal intimidation) of the IPC but later Section 307 (Attempt to murder) of IPC was included to prevent him getting the bail.
