The Madras High Court on Monday observed that people would lose faith in the judiciary if courts began directing the police to provide personal security officers (PSOs) to people with criminal backgrounds who faced threats to their lives solely because of their own conduct.
Justice N. Anand Venkatesh said this, while denying police protection to ‘Milakaipodi’ Venkatesan alias K. Venkatesh of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since he was an accused person in as many as 49 cases booked in Andhra Pradesh for smuggling red sanders, apart from criminal cases pending in Tamil Nadu.
The judge also criticised the Tamil Nadu police for blowing hot and cold on the issue by vehemently opposing the plea for police protection before the court on one hand, but on the hand, leaking to the writ petitioner, the internal communications related to him facing threats to his life from his rivals.,
“This attitude on the part of the respondent police (Red Hills police under Avadi Commissionerate) is quite incomprehensible,” the judge wrote. He went on to state that the court should be very hesitant to order police protection to people facing threats due to their criminal backgrounds.
In his affidavit before the court, the petitioner had stated that he was engaged in an import and export business and that he was also running an educational trust that had secured a franchisee to run a school at Red Hills. He also claimed to be the Tamil Nadu State secretary of the BJP’s OBC wing.
Stating that his close relative was murdered on August 17, 2023, the petitioner said a man, Muthu Saravanan was behind the murder. Claiming that he and his family too began receiving threats thereafter, the petitioner said, Muthu Saravanan was subsequently killed in a police encounter on October 12, 2023.
Immediately, certain videos were circulated on social media platforms accusing the petitioner of being the reason for the encounter death. This increased the threat perception, he said and claimed that even the Intelligence Bureau, under the Union Home Ministry, had written to the State police about the threat faced by him.
On the other hand, Additional Public Prosecutor A. Damodaran informed the court about the list of cases pending against the petitioner in Andhra Pradesh and said he had even obtained a gun licence from the Nagaland police by providing a local address over there, and had used the weapon to threaten people.
The APP said the Tamil Nadu police had already written to their counterparts in Nagaland to cancel the gun licence. He further said that a history-sheet was opened against the petitioner in 2023 and a police picket was posted near his house to prevent the movement of anti-social elements.
After recording the submissions made by the law officer, Justice Venkatesh wrote: “If this court directs to give police protection for such persons, it will send a wrong signal to the society and a normal citizen should not get an impression that people with criminal background are also provided with police protection. If such an impression is created, they will lose their faith in the existing system.”
