Tuesday, Apr 22, 2003
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Tamil Nadu
By J. Venkatesan
On a petition from the DMK general secretary, K. Anbazhagan, for transfer of two cases from Chennai to a court outside Tamil Nadu, the apex court had on February 28 stayed all further proceedings in the "Rs. 66-crore wealth case" against Ms. Jayalalithaa and in the wealth case against the AIADMK MP, T.T.V. Dinakaran. The court had ordered notice to the Tamil Nadu Government and to the other accused — Ms. Jayalalithaa, Sasikalaa, Ilavarasi and V.N. Sudhagaran. The case comes up for further hearing on April 28. Seeking vacation of the stay, Ms. Jayalalithaa who is the main accused, in her counter said that the DMK's petition was an "abuse" of the judicial process by suppression of material facts that a similar petition filed by two DMK MPs was already pending in the Madras High Court. She asserted that the petition was a serious attack on the independence of the judiciary and a deliberate attempt to ridicule its functioning. And many paragraphs in the petition were verbatim copy of the petition filed in the High Court. She said even though the cases were falsely motivated and instituted by a rival political party, she faced them legally and fearlessly since she was innocent of the alleged offence. At no point of time did she ever attempt to influence the due course of trial and it was wrong to allege that the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption was under her control. Ms. Jayalalithaa also denied the DMK's allegation that she was monitoring and administering the investigation and prosecution of the case against her or that she was in a position to do so. She refuted the charge that the officers of the investigating agency were compelled to function in an atmosphere surcharged with bias and undue influence, leading to ineffective collection of evidence or distortion of evidentiary materials gathered hitherto in the trial of the above cases. There was sufficient protection under the Cr.P.C. and the Evidence Act to ensure a free and fair trial. Great prejudice would be caused to her if at this stage the cases were to be transferred, especially when arguments had just commenced, she said and prayed for dismissal of the transfer petition.
DVAC denies allegation
The DVAC, in its response, denied that the agency and the Public Prosecutor were acting under the dictates of any of the accused. And no accused had attempted to terrorise or influence the agency or the witnesses and no complaint had been made so far by any of the witnesses. On the allegation that 80 witnesses were recalled at the instance of Ms. Jayalalithaa and that they had become hostile, the DVAC said only 22 witnesses were recalled at her instance and another 45 witnesses at the instance of Ms. Sasikalaa, the third accused in the case. Stating that the proceedings in the six-year-old wealth case were in an advanced stage, it said so far 249 witnesses had been examined with the depositions in Tamil running to about 1,500 pages. A total of 2,295 pages had been marked as exhibits. It was wrong to suggest that the rule of law would be impaired for any reason and that the Public Prosecutor would not act in the interests of justice and the allegation of likelihood of bias in the conduct of the prosecution was unjustified, the DVAC said and sought the dismissal of the petition.
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