The Supreme Court on October 10 questioned the manner in which a single judge of the Madras high court — principal bench in Madras — passed an order for probe by an SIT into the Karur stampede at actor-politician Vijay’s rally on September 27, when the petition it was responding to was for framing a standard operating protocol for political rallies. There was also a fallacy in the order as the division bench of the high court at Madurai was examining the issue, the apex court said.
A bench of Justices J.K. Maheshwari and N.V. Anjaria asked why the principal bench entertained the petition related to the Karur incident as Karur fell within the jurisdiction of the Madurai bench. The court highlighted the procedural fault before going ahead with the hearing on a batch of petitions, including one filed by Vijay’s party, Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam, on the stampede during Vijay’s rally which killed 41 persons.
The Supreme Court also questioned the Tamil Nadu government for allowing TVK to hold the rally in Karur when AIADMK was denied permission to hold one there. It also asked how the post-mortem examination of the Karur stampede victims was conducted at midnight and completed within four hours.
Senior advocate Gopal Subramanium, appearing for TVK, said that many adverse observations were passed against Vijay by the high court, which were factually wrong. For instance, he continued, while the actor-politician was forced by the state police to leave the spot of the stampede, the high court had wrongly said that he absconded and abandoned his fans. The remarks also violated natural justice, the advocate added, as Vijay was not a party in court and was, therefore, not heard. Expressing apprehension that the SIT, consisting of state officials, would not conduct a fair probe in the case, TVK submitted that the investigation must be conducted under the supervision of a retired Supreme Court judge. This was objected to by the state government.