Chennai: The inspector of police, Abiramapuram police station has informed the Madras high court that there could be no malice or bias that could be attributed to him in conduct of investigation into the alleged malpractices including large scale distribution of money during the cancelled elections to the R.K.Nagar Assembly constituency.
R. Kannan, inspector of police, Abiramapuram police station, stated this in his counter affidavit filed in response to the petition filed by DMK candidate N,Maruthu Ganesh.
A division bench comprising Justices M. Sathyanarayanan and N. Seshasayee before whom the counter affidavit was filed, adjourned to November 7, further hearing of the case.
Originally, in his petition, Maruthu Ganesh sought a direction to the Union government to frame appropriate guidelines to ensure the accountability of the Election Commission of India for its actions and inactions, besides a compensation of `5 lakh which he spent during the cancelled election from the ECI.
Seeking to transfer the investigation to the CBI, he also filed another petition seeking permission to implead CBI as a party respondent.
In his counter affidavit, Kannan submitted that based on a complaint from the Returning Officer, the Abiramapuram police had registered a case for offences under section 171 (b) IPC.
The investigation was undertaken by the then Inspector of Police under the supervision of Joint Commissioner of Police (East Zone), Greater Chennai. About 882 witnesses were examined. In the meantime, one Narasimhan had preferred a petition before this court seeking for quashing of the FIR. The Madras high court had on March 13, 2018 quashed the FIR.
While thing stood thus, it was understood that the present petition came up for hearing before this court and the petitioner has preferred the miscellaneous petition.
In the light of the FIR being quashed and there being no complaint, which was pending on the file of this police station, both the miscellaneous petitions were liable to be dismissed, he added.
He said the petitioner in the present petitions was seeking to implead the CBI as a party respondent. In the light of the fact that the FIR has been quashed by this court and there being no FIR that was pending on the file of Abiramapuram police station, there was no necessity for seeking to implead the CBI.
The investigation was conducted in a proper, fair and unbiased manner evidenced by the recording from the statement from various persons, which file was produced before the high court at time of hearing of the quash petition, recording the developments and the stage investigation was, the high court quashed the FIR.
Therefore, there could be no malice or bias that could be attributed to the Abiramapuram police in conduct of investigation. Subsequently on December 21, 2017, byelection to R.K. Nagar assembly constituency was conducted and results were declared, he added.
