The Madras High Court witnessed a high-voltage drama on Wednesday when a vacation bench prescribed a bitter pill to senior IPS officer A. Arun (IPS:1998:TN). In order to make the senior IPS officer realize the might of the judiciary, the judge made him wait in court all through the day because a court bailiff had to wait for hours to deliver summons to Arun.
Though Arun was present on Wednesday morning, the bench passed over the matter to the afternoon, saying its bailiff sent to serve the summons was made to wait for more than two hours by his clerical staff there. The bench also summoned the clerical staff member who had allegedly delayed acceptance of the summons.
Arun is an ADGP-rank IPS officer who now heads the state’s Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC).
The judge was so exasperated that he pushed the case file aside and thundered, “The man (Arun) should wait here (in the court) till the case is heard.”
Though govt. counsel R. John Sathyan tried to put forth an explanation, he was stopped by the judge, who said, “We want to see the face that made us wait,” summoning the clerk from the IPS officer’s office.
A vacation bench comprising Justice G R Swaminathan and Justice V. Lakshminarayanan had summoned Arun in connection with a habeas corpus petition filed by the wife of a builder named Santosh Sharma detained under the Goondas Act, since he was Chennai’s Police Commissioner when the detention happened.
The court had described the detention as draconian when the interim bail plea moved by his wife, Kalpana Sharma, came up for hearing.
When the case was taken up again around 2.30 pm, Justice Swaminathan questioned the staff member over the delay in receiving the court summons.
The judge then observed that an ‘atrocious’ detention order had been passed against the builder under the Goondas Act and that the court intended to make serious observations against Arun and passed over the matter once again.
The case was taken up later in the evening when Arun explained his stand.
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