A city court on Saturday<\/p>\n
granted interim bail till June 1 to DMK organisation secretary and Rajya Sabha member R S Bharathi, who was arrested for his alleged disparaging remarks made against the Scheduled Caste community a few months ago.<\/p>\n
A battery of DMK lawyers, including senior counsel P Wilson and N R Elango, who are Rajya Sabha members of the party, rushed to Principal Sessions judge Selvakumars residence to pre-empt remanding of Bharathi in judicial custody.<\/p>\n
Acceding to their plea for a reprieve in the meantime, the judge granted Bharathi interim bail till June 1.<\/p>\n
An FIR was registered against Bharathi under the IPC provisions besides those of the SC\/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, based on the complaint lodged by Athi Tamilar Makkal Katchi leader Kalyanasundaram for an alleged speech by the DMK leader at a party forum indoor meeting.<\/p>\n
According to the interim order passed by the sessions judge, Bharathi was produced before him by police at 8.45am.<\/p>\n
The investigating officer submitted that he had conducted a proper probe and remanding the accused in judicial custody is necessary.<\/p>\n
Opposing the same, senior counsel Elango and Wilson argued the arrest is politically motivated.<\/p>\n
“Though the case was originally registered at the Teynampet police station, on May 22 it was transferred to Chennai CCB.<\/p>\n
Immediately after such transfer, the investigating officer arrested the accused without doing any further investigation,” the senior counsel said.<\/p>\n
This apart, the accused has already moved the High Court seeking permission to surrender before the special court for MPs and MLAs with a direction to the court to consider his bail application on the same day, they added.<\/p>\n
Pointing out that the wife and son of the accused are doctors attending ward duty in a government hospital, they said the accused himself was in home quarantine in view of his family members’ job.<\/p>\n
“Remanding him in custody is likely to prejudice his health too,” they added.<\/p>\n
Countering the arguments, state public prosecutor A Natarajan submitted there was no bar for the police to arrest the accused in view of pendency of quash petition or bail application.<\/p>\n
Since the case falls under the SC\/ST Act, the complainant has to be heard and no order can be passed without hearing him.<\/p>\n
Recording the submissions, the sessions judge said a remand could be refused only when there is no prima facie case made out from the prosecution records.<\/p>\n
Hence, the accused is remanded till June 5.<\/p>\n
In view of the submissions that the quash petitions are pending with the high court and that the family members of the accused are doctors involved in COVID-19 work, the judge said there are possibilities of infection spreading to other inmates of jail.<\/p>\n
Hence, the court is inclined to release the accused on interim bail till May 31 rather than keeping him in jail.<\/p>\n
He shall surrender before the special court without fail on June 1 subject to the results of the pleas pending before the high court, the judge said.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A city court on Saturday granted interim bail till June 1 to DMK organisation secretary and Rajya Sabha member R S Bharathi, who was arrested for his alleged disparaging remarks made against the Scheduled Caste community a few months ago. A battery of DMK lawyers, including senior counsel P Wilson and N R Elango, who are Rajya Sabha members of the party, rushed to Principal Sessions judge Selvakumars residence to pre-empt remanding of Bharathi in judicial custody. Acceding to their plea for a reprieve in the meantime, the judge granted…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26971,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26970"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26970"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26972,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26970\/revisions\/26972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}