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Petition in HC against harassment by moneylender

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI MAY 21. An anti-usury activist petition alleging harassment by a moneylender and a police official, and seeking to quash a `false FIR' registered against him has been admitted by the Madras High Court.

Justice R. Balasubramanian ordered notices to the inspector, Madurai Town Protection of Civil Rights Police Station and the Assistant Commissioner, Bose, returnable by June 17.

According to S. George Virumandi, a PUCL member and secretary of the decade-old Usury Atrocities Prevention Movement (Vatti Kodumai Thaduppu Iyakkam), his co-petitioner, S. Murugan, borrowed Rs. 3 lakhs from P. Natarajan in September 2000.

He signed many blank documents and pronotes, and agreed to repay Rs. 3 lakhs though only Rs. 2.4 lakhs had been handed over to him.

He borrowed another Rs. 1 lakh on similar repayment arrangement.

The petitioner claimed that by March 2002, Mr. Murugan repaid Rs. 7.1 lakhs. But Mr. Natarajan told him that he had paid only the interest and the principal is outstanding.

``Trapped in the loan shackle'', Mr. Murugan approached Mr. Virumandi's forum for relief.

Complaints at the local-level did not help, as according to him, the respondent-police official was a `close relative' of the moneylender.

When the petitioners approached a Deputy Commissioner of Police for proper and fair enquiry, one Vetrivel preferred a complaint against them under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act in December last, alleging that they had called him by caste names when he demanded Rs. 2 lakhs which, Mr. Murugan had `borrowed'.

Describing the complaint as false and fabricated, the petitioners approached the State Human Rights Commission and the Additional Director-General of Police PCR, Human Rights and Social Justice for relief.

The complaint was vague, and there was no proof of the mode of payment of the said amount by Mr. Vetrivel, who they said, was not known to them at all.

The `concocted and tailored' complaint was made only to victimise them for their efforts to stop usury practices in four districts through their movement. ``For factual, legal and contextual reasons there is no sufficient ground to sustain the prosecution'', the petitioners said.

They prayed for the quashing of the FIR and sought to take action against Mr. Vetrivel and Mr. Bose for having used a welfare legislation such as the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act in a motivated manner.

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