New Delhi: Expelled AIADMK Member of Parliament Sasikala Pushpa and her family members moved the Supreme Court on Saturday challenging an order of the Madurai bench of the Madras high court rejecting her plea for anticipatory bail in an alleged sexual harassment complaint filed by a former maid servant.
The apex court on August 26 had granted protection for six weeks and in the meanwhile the high court rejected the anticipatory bail.
They said the complaint was frivolous and nothing but political vendetta just because she raised her voice against the AIADMK leadership. She said after she was expelled from the party cases were foisted against her and the family for an incident that was alleged to have happened in 2011 in a bid to compel and pressurize her to resign from her seat in the Rajya Sabha. One such complaint was filed by Mrs. B. Banumati W/o late Karupasamy, before the superintendent of police, Tuticorin, Tamil Nadu, falsely claiming to have been sexually harassed by the petitioners while working as maid in the house of the petitioners in the year 2011.
It is pertinent to note that the complainant Mrs. B. Banumati has lodged the aforesaid complaint virtually against each and every family member of Ms. Sashikala only with intent to wreck vengeance upon them. They argued that the timing of the complaint was highly suspicious and a result of political vendetta due to expulsion of the petitioner no. 1 from the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and her refusal to resign from her constitutional post.
She said being an MP she will not flee the country and in this case no custodial interrogation is required for the police to arrest her and her family members.
With reference to an order that a fresh case should be registered for the vakkalatnama she signed for the anticipatory bail, she said on August 17 she signed the Vakalatnama for the Bail Application to be filed in the high court of Madras at Madurai Bench while she was in India and sent the Vakalatnama to Madurai, Tamil Nadu through her husband. Then fearing for her life, Ms. Sashikala said she left for Singapore on the same day in a late night flight.
However due to a clerical mistake the date on the Vakalatnama was entered as August 18, 2016, before it was filed in the high court. For this mistake the HC ordered registration of case which is erroneous, she said and prayed for quashing the orders and to grant her and her family anticipatory bail.
