HC dismisses contempt petition against Arappor Iyakkam

The Madras High Court on Friday dismissed a contempt of court docket petition filed by Municipal Administration and Rural Development Minister S.P. Velumani against non-governmental organisation Arappor Iyakkam, its convener Jayaram Venkatesan, joint convener Jahir Hussain and treasurer P. Nakeeran for constantly accusing the Minister of corruption on their social media accounts regardless of an interim order handed by the court docket on February 17.

First Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy got here down closely on the Minister for having filed the contempt petition regardless of the February 17 court docket order not having gagged anybody from talking about allegations of corruption. The judges mentioned it was a “frivolous contempt petition that needs to be thrown away” and that it was nothing however an abuse of the method of the court docket.

The judges additionally initially dictated orders imposing a token value of ₹10 on the Minister for having filed such a petition. However, when petitioner’s counsel requested to not impose such prices because the contempt petition had been filed on the idea of a misunderstanding of the court docket order and never due to any malice, the judges accepted his request and ordered that no such prices should be paid.

It was whereas passing interim orders on a case filed by Arappor Iyakkam, by way of its counsel V. Suresh, for registration of a corruption case against the Minister, that the court docket had noticed that mere pendency of the case “should not be regarded as any adverse inference being drawn against the Minister concerned.” The Minister claimed that the NGO was persevering with to make allegations regardless of such “explicit direction” by the court docket.