T’puram: Ministers KT Jaleel and EP Jayarajan appeared in person before the chief judicial magistrate (CJM) court on Wednesday and secured bail in the assembly ruckus case of 2015. They appeared before the CJM court after the high court on Tuesday refused the government’s plea for excusing the appearance of ministers .
Jaleel and Jayarajan were among the six opposition legislators who were arraigned as accused in the case that was registered by the police on the complaint filed by the legislative assembly secretary.
The LDF MLAs, who were then part of the opposition, had unleashed chaos inside the assembly on March 13, 2015 in a bid to disrupt the proceedings and prevent the then finance minister KM Mani –who was facing bribery allegations – from presenting the budget. The other accused in the case are K Ajith, K Kunju Muhammed, C K Sadasivan and V Sivankutty.
In September, CJM had dismissed the withdrawal petition filed by the government. In his order, CJM R Jayakrishnan held that the visual evidence of the damage caused by the legislators were in public domain and failure to take appropriate legal action on such unlawful activities would send a bad message to the society. The magistrate also held that the court had arrived at this decision based on the high court directive that cases related to destruction of public property must not be dismissed without trial.
Though the government challenged this decision before the high court, the lower court’s decision was upheld by the high court.
Besides securing bail in the case, the two ministers also filed their withdrawal petitions before the court. The petitions will be heard on November 12.