Thiruvananthapuram: The horror that suddenly broke out inside the legislative Assembly on Friday the 13th, in a swelteringly hot March in 2015, has not stopped giving the state occasional tremors. The intriguing thing is, even three months after chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said he was withdrawing the case, the government has not formally moved a petition in the High Court seeking the withdrawal of the criminal case against sitting and former legislators (one of whom is now a minister) for going on a destruction spree inside the House on budget day in 2015.
And now, two activists of National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI) have queered the pitch for the government.
RTI activists M T Thomas and Peter Njalipparambil have moved the High Court against the proposed withdrawal of cases. They have told the court that the accused, against whom criminal charges have been imposed, have not even taken bail. The court then sought documents, and had posted the case for July 3. “Nobody should be allowed to destroy public property and claim success of the strikes on the basis of the quantum of loss sustained to the State,” Thomas told Onmanorama. Former IPS officer Ajit Joy is arguing their case pro bono.
Ajit Joy said the case could not be withdrawn as there was no public interest involved. “What public interest is there in a case where public property has been so wantonly destroyed,” Joy asked. “These are people who are supposed to conduct themselves in the most exemplary manner. Instead, they exhibit their basest instincts inside the very sanctum sanctorum of democracy. They have to pay for it,” he said. It was the LDF's political decision to prevent then finance minister K M Mani, accused of selling the budget, from presenting the budget in the Assembly that finally erupted into a riot of destruction. It is another matter that the LDF, when it returned to power, attempted to woo Mani to its side.
The accused (CPM's E P Jayarajan, V Sivankutty, C K Sadasivan and K Kunjahmed Master, CPI's K Ajith, and Left independent K T Jaleel) are obviously insulated by the power they wield. There is a chargesheet against them but they have not bothered to appear before the court even once. “The court, too, has not made an effort to summon them,” Joy said. The accused have not taken bail, either. “Had it been a common man against whom the kind of charges slapped against these legislators were imposed he would have been arrested long before,” Thomas said. (Sivankutty, C K Sadasivan, K Kunjahmed Master and K Ajith are no more MLAs.)
It is under Section 3(1) of the Prevention of Destruction of Public Property (PDPP) Act that criminal cases were slapped against the six when they were legislators in the 13th Assembly. The Section lays down a rigorous imprisonment of up to five years for those found guilty. It is also tough to secure bail under this Section. The bail will be granted only if the accused furnish a sum as bond that is equal to the value of the public property damaged. In this case, the damage caused to the properties inside the Assembly, like chair and computers and mikes, have been officially estimated at Rs 2.20 lakh. "The government is now trying to let these people off the hook even without extracting compensation for the public damage they have inflicted," Thomas said.
Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan is strongly against any action. He had invoked the “privilege of legislators” to justify his government’s decision to withdraw the criminal case against the accused. “The move to withdraw the case is related to the privileges of the members. The decision has to be taken by the Legislature itself,” Vijayan had said in the Assembly in March. He argued that there was nothing improper in withdrawing the case with the permission of the court. Now, the NCPRI activists have thrown a major challenge.