‘No role for petitioners in registration of FIR in the case’
The impleading petition filed by Bharatiya Abhibhashaka Parishad and the oral permission sought by Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala to be heard in the discharge petitions filed by General Education Minister V. Sivankutty and others in the Assembly ruckus case was dismissed by a trial court on Thursday.
Dismissing the petitions, R. Rekha, the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Thiruvananthapruam, noted that the petitioners had no role in the registration of first information report in the case. It was important to note that two private persons, who had no connection with the case, came forward seeking permission to intervene in the matter.
The petitioners were neither the de facto complainants nor the informants in the case. The fact that public properties were damaged by the members of the Legislative Assembly on the floor of the House was not a ground for the petitioners to seek permission or to file written objections and to advance argument in the discharge petitions, the court noted.
Mr. Sivankutty and six LDF leaders had earlier moved a petition to discharge them from the case. The case against the accused was that they barged on to the dais of the Assembly Speaker on March 13, 2015, in an attempt to prevent the then Finance Minister K.M. Mani from presenting the annual Budget. The legislators were booked under the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act for causing a loss of Rs. 2.20 lakh.
The petitioner’s apprehension, the court noted, that the mind applied by the prosecutor while filing withdrawal of prosecution petition would also be reflected on the discharge petition was out of place.
The prosecutor who moved the withdrawal of prosecution petition was not the one who appeared in the discharge petition, the court noted.
The mere apprehension of a party that the public prosecutor would not be serious in conducting the prosecution simply because a conviction or an acquittal in the case would affect another pending case was no ground to grant permission to the petitioners, who are total strangers in the conduct of the prosecution, and to intervene in the discharge petitions, the court concluded.
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