In a surprise move, the Chennai city police on Tuesday engaged senior counsel A. Ramesh as a Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) to oppose anticipatory bail applications filed by 31 employees and three distributors of Tamil magazine Nakkheeran in a case booked against them under Section 124 (assaulting President/Governor with intent to compel or restrain the exercise of any lawful power) of Indian Penal Code.
Appearing before Justice M. Dhandapani, the senior counsel sought time to demonstrate how an order passed by a Metropolitan Magistrate here on October 9 refusing to remand the magazine editor R.R. Gopal to judicial custody was “ex-facie illegal and unsustainable in law.”
He said it was essential to prove the “illegality” of the Magistrate’s order since the present petitioners had relied upon it heavily.
The SPP also gave an undertaking to the court that no coercive action shall be taken against the advance bail petitioners until the court hears him and takes a decision on the issue.
After recording his undertaking, the judge adjourned the petitions to November 12 for the SPP to make his submissions in detail both on the applicability of Section 124 IPC as well as the alleged illegality in the Magistrate’s order.
He claimed that the Magistrate should not have ordered Mr. Gopal to execute a bond for ₹ 10,000 if he was satisfied that no prima facie case had been made out against the accused.
‘Unknown to law’
“Such a procedure is unknown to law. When a Magistrate does not find any ground even to remand, where is the question of directing the accused to execute a bail bond? Bond can be executed only by a person who has been granted bail,” he argued.
The case had been booked at the Zam Bazaar police station here on the basis of a complaint lodged by Raj Bhavan official. The complaint was the fallout of a series of news reports published by the magazine insinuating that the Governor and senior Raj Bhavan officials had links with Nirmala Devi, an assistant professor of a college in Virudhunagar district, who was arrested in April on charges of attempted trafficking of college girls.