NEW DELHI:
Supreme Court on Friday questioned the manner in which a single judge of the
Madras High Court - principal bench in Chennai - passed an order for a probe by an SIT into , when the petition it was responding to was for framing a standard operating protocol for political rallies.
There is also fallacy in the order as the division bench of the high court at Madurai was examining the issue, it said.
A bench of Justices J K Maheshwari and N V Anjaria asked why the principal bench entertained the petition related to the incident in Karur which falls within the jurisdiction of the Madurai bench. The court highlighted the procedural fault before going ahead with the hearing on a batch of petitions, including one filed by Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), on the stampede during TVK leader Vijay's rally that killed 41 people.
SC questions TN on nod to Vijay’s party to hold Karur rally SC also questioned Tamil Nadu for allowing TVK to hold the rally in Karur when AIADMK was denied permission to hold one there. It also asked how the postmortem of victims of the Karur stampede was conducted at midnight and completed within four hours. The state govt has been directed to respond to the court's queries.
Senior advocate Gopal Subramanium, appearing for TVK, submitted that the petition filed before the HC was for a limited purpose - to frame SOP for political rallies - but SIT was constituted by the court on the first day of hearing itself. He also said many adverse observations were passed against Vijay which were factually wrong.
Subramanium said while the actor was forced by state police to leave the spot, the HC had wrongly said he absconded and abandoned his fans.
Expressing apprehension that the SIT, composing of state officials, would not conduct a fair probe in the case, TVK submitted that the investigation must be conducted under the supervision of a retired SC judge. Its plea was, however, strongly objected by senior advocates Mukul Rohatgi, AM Singhvi and P Wilson who submitted that it was not the state but the HC which had suggested the composition of the SIT. They said that the state govt has no axe to grind against anyone and it was not proper to question the impartiality of the SIT probe. The state also opposed a CBI probe in the case and told the bench that bringing the central agency to investigate the matter would undermine the federal structure.
Responding to the court's observation about the speedy conduct of postmortems, Wilson said this was an incident of tragedy and there was a lot of hue and cry because families started demanding the dead bodies and 606 doctors and nurses were mobilised on that fateful day.
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