Madras High Court on Thursday granted conditional bail to former minister and AIADMK leader D Jayakumar in an attempt to murder case filed against him. Action against the leader was initiated after a video of him parading a shirtless DMK worker near a polling booth and attempting to cast a bogus vote during the urban local body polls on February 19, went viral.
Justice A D Jagadish Chandra granted him bail on condition that the former minister stays at Tiruchi and signs 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.
After counsel of Jayakumar, A Natarajan appealed to the 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. However, the former minister will be able to come out of the prison only if he obtains bail in a third case which was slapped against him on the election day violence.
In his appeal before the High Court, Jayakumar petitioned that the DMK worker’s shirt was removed on the apprehension that he was carrying a weapon as he was a hardcore 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 authorises private individuals also to arrest a person found to be committing a cognisable offence and hand him over to the police.
The DMK worker, he said, was admitted to a government hospital without sustaining any injuries and 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 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 from getting a bail.