Co-accused get advance bail in cases against Siva Shankar Baba

The Madras High Court on Monday granted anticipatory bail to a number of the co-accused in two out of three cases booked to this point against self-styled godman Sivashankaran alias Siva Shankar Baba on fees of getting sexually abused lady youngsters of a residential college on the outskirts of Chennai.

Justice M. Dhandapani granted advance bail to Deepa Venkataramanan in two cases. The different co-accused R. Karunambikai, Dhivya Balasubramanian and Neeraja Jayaraman had been granted bail in one of many three cases. All the petitioners had been ordered to give up their passports earlier than the decrease courtroom involved.

The decide additionally ordered that the petitioners should seem earlier than the investigating officer day-after-day for 2 weeks. The advance bail was granted after senior counsel A. Ramesh and advocate D. Selvam argued that there have been hardly any supplies to implicate the petitioners in the alleged crime.

The counsel mentioned there have been no direct allegations against the petitioners both in the First Information Report or in the victims’ statements recorded below Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. They mentioned the petitioners had been arrayed because the co-accused solely as a result of they occurred to be employees of the residential college based by Sivashankaran.

They additionally identified that one of many current complaints against the petitioner had been lodged by a former pupil of the college for an incident that allegedly occurred in 2012.

On the opposite hand, Government Counsel Raj Thilak advised the courtroom that to this point three FIRs had been booked against the prime accused and statements had been obtained from 4 victims. Many extra former college students had been in contact with the police and wished to lodge complaints. If anticipatory bail was granted to the current petitioners at this stage, it could deter others from approaching the police, he mentioned.

However, the decide mentioned such issues couldn’t be taken into consideration to disclaim bail to individuals against whom there have been no direct allegations in the Section 164 statements. He additionally closed two different anticipatory bail petitions filed by Janaki Srinivasan, by means of her counsel M. Mohamed Riyaz, after recording the submission of the police that she was not an accused in any of the three cases booked to this point.

The girl had approached the courtroom since her identify was linked to the crime in media experiences.