The Madras High Court on Thursday quashed a case booked by the Greater Chennai Police against former AIADMK Minister ‘Ma Foi’ K. Pandiarajan, for having used a dummy coffin containing former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s figurine draped with the national flag, during the R.K. Nagar Assembly constituency bypoll campaign in April 2017.
Justice N. Anand Venkatesh quashed all proceedings pending against the former Minister as well as the other accused persons, before a special court for cases against Members of Parliament and Members of the Legislative Assembly, after holding that no offence as pressed by the prosecution had been made out against the quash petitioners.
The judge held that the petitioners’ act in having chosen to perform a dramatic re-enactment of the State funeral accorded to the former Chief Minister could at best be seen as an appeal to the sentiments or emotions of the voters and could not be stretched to the extent of terming it to be an undue influence exerted on them.
The judge also concluded that neither were the charges pressed under the Indian Penal Code nor those under the Representation of People Act, 1951 made out against the petitioners. He said, even Section 2 of the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act of 1971 could not be invoked against the petitioners as they had no intention to cause any disrespect to the national tricolour and therefore, invocation of the 1971 Act too, was unwarranted.
The First Information Report (FIR) in the case was booked on the basis of a complaint lodged by a member of the Election Commission’s flying squad.
The police had booked the petitioners under Section 171F (punishment for undue influence or personation at an election) of the IPC read with Section 123(2) of the Representation of the People Act of 1951 besides invoking Section 2 of the 1971 Act. The Minister had filed the present quash petition in 2019 and obtained an interim stay of the proceedings.
