Madurai Bench dismisses petitions against Chief Secretary, DGP

After scrutinising all the relevant documents and submissions, a division bench comprising Justice KK Sasidharan and Justice PD Audikesavalu held that the allegations of perjury against Chief Secretary Girija Vaidyanathan did nothold water.

On the complaint against DGP TK Rajendran, the bench pulled up the petitioner K Kathiresan, a trade union member, observing that he had been filing repeated petitions against the same police officer. "The petitioner had given it a name of "public interest litigation" to make it appear as if everything is in a larger public interest," said the court while dismissing the petition.

It was in December that Kathiresan first moved the court seeking interim directions to restrain Rajendran from continuing as the DGP and direct the CBI to constitute a special team to inquire the alleged involvement of senior officials in the infamous gutkha scam. He then filed another petition, this time accusing the chief secretary of perjury for allegedly filing a false affidavit that there were no documents in her office linked to the gutkhascam in her.

Kathiresan claimed that when DVAC wrote to the Income Tax department seeking documents linked to the scam in 2017, the latter informed the agency that they were sent to the Chief Secretary’s office. These documents were later recovered from late chief minister J Jayalalithaa’s residents, the petitioner alleged. However, Girija Vaidyanathan failed to inform the Union Public Service Commission while considering Rajendran’s name among others for appointment as DGP.

During the hearing, the court had directed the Income Tax department to submit all communications from it to the office of the chief secretary in a sealed cover. However, the State counsel said they were mere allegations.