The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Monday, hearing a batch of public interest litigation petitions filed in 2018 with regard to the Thoothukudi police firing incident, sought the State government’s stand on examining the decisions taken / G.O.s issued by the previous government to drop disciplinary proceedings against three officials.
A Division Bench of Justices C.V. Karthikeyan and R. Sakthivel took note of the compliance report submitted by the State. It was submitted that under the previous DMK government further action was dropped in the disciplinary proceedings initiated against the then Thoothukudi Collector N. Venkatesh, the then Inspector General of Police Shailesh Kumar Yadav and the then Deputy Inspector General of Police Kapil Kumar C. Saratkar.
The court sought to know the stand of the TVK led government to examine the G.O.s issued in this regard. Earlier, the court sought details with regard to the Justice Aruna Jagadeesan Commission of Inquiry report, action taken based on the report, relief granted to the family members of the victims and other such details related to the case.
In August 2018, the High Court had ordered a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the police firing incident that claimed 13 lives and left many injured during the anti-Sterlite protests in Thoothukudi on May 22 and 23 in 2018. The protesters had demanded the closure of Vedanta’s Sterlite Copper plant. The matter was posted under the caption ‘for reporting compliance’. The batch of petitions was adjourned till September 10.
