After making senior IPS officer A Arun (IPS:1998:TN) wait through the day in court on May 27, the Madras High Court on Friday censured him for having passed a detention order against a realtor in an alleged fraud case when he was Chennai’s Police Commissioner.
Arun is currently posted as Chief of the state’s Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC).
While quashing the detention order, a division bench of Justice GR Swaminathan and Justice V Lakshminarayanan remarked that the detention order was passed for extraneous reasons.
The bench observed Arun ought to know that preventive detention orders could not be passed recklessly.
The matter pertains to a habeas corpus plea challenging the detention of a real estate developer, Santosh Sharma, under the Goondas Act when Arun was city police chief.
The bench had described the detention order as shocking and summoned A Arun, then Commissioner of Police, who had passed the detention order.
When the matter was taken up on May 27, the court expressed displeasure at the manner in which the court bailiff was made to wait for almost 2 hours at the IPS officer’s office to serve the court summons. The court ordered the office staff, who made the bailiff wait, to appear before the bench and asked the IPS officer to wait in court till then.
When the staff appeared, the bench censured him and said that the court would take action. The court also said that it had summoned Arun to put him on notice before issuing directions.
In its order the court said while Sharma had willfully breached terms of contract, which deserved to be prosecuted in court or law, his acts did not cause a threat to public safety as such.
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