The Madras High Court on Thursday called for a copy of the charge sheet filed by the Q Branch-Criminal Investigation Department in the fake passport scam case. The case relates to several Indian passports having been issued to Sri Lankan nationals on the basis of fake documents between June 2018 and July 2020 when Additional Director-General of Police (ADGP) Davidson Devasirvatham served as the Commissioner of Police, Madurai city.
Chief Justice S.V. Gangapurwala and Justice P.D. Audikesavalu issued the direction after Advocate-General R. Shunmugasundaram and State Public Prosecutor Hasan Mohamed Jinnah said the Q Branch-CID had completed the probe and laid the charge sheet before the jurisdictional judicial magistrate. Wanting to peruse the final report, the judges granted time till September 26 for production of the document. The direction was issued during the hearing of a public interest litigation petition filed by R. Varaaki, who sought a direction to the Chief Secretary to conduct a preliminary inquiry into the representations made by him on May 24 and July 20 this year and initiate departmental action against Mr. Devasirvatham if the inquiry discloses his involvement in the scam. The petitioner alleged that the ADGP’s wife was running a travel agency at the relevant point of time.
Stating that the scam came to light only after officials of the Bureau of Immigration intercepted a couple of Sri Lankan nationals when they attempted to fly to Sri Lanka and Dubai using the fake passports in June 2019 and January 2020, the litigant said it was a serious issue involving national security. He recalled that a Division Bench of the Madurai Bench of the High Court had on February 11, 2021, directed the Q Branch-CID to complete the investigation within three months.
On the other hand, Mr. Shunmugasundaram told the court that pursuant to the Division Bench order, Justice G.R. Swaminathan, sitting on the Madurai Bench, had given a clean chit to Mr. Devasirvatham. “One can note that that the buck stops with the nodal officer. The involvement of the officials above the said rank may not really arise... Therefore, I give a clean chit to Shri S. Davidson Devasirvatham, IPS,” the judge had written in his verdict.
However, counsel for the present PIL petitioner told the First Bench, led by the Chief Justice, that the writ petition before the single judge was nothing beyond renewal of a passport. Therefore, the observations made by the judge while disposing of that writ petition must be considered only as an obiter dicta (opinion expressed by a judge on an issue not directly related to the case before him and therefore not legally binding as a precedent).
After hearing both sides, the Bench decided to peruse the charge sheet before taking a call on the issue.
