Sanitary Workers being removed from the pavement near the Ripon buildings in the later hours of Wednesday.
| Photo Credit: R. RAGU
The Madras High Court on Friday (August 29, 2025) reserved its orders after wondering why it should not constitute a one man commission, led by its retired judge, to probe into allegations of police excess while quelling the Greater Chennai Corporation conservancy workers protest outside the Rippon building recently.
A Division Bench of Justices M.S. Ramesh and V. Lakshminarayanan told Additional Advocate General J. Ravindran the commission would be able to cull out the truth since the lawyers, who were also detained along with the conservancy workers, and the police were accusing each other of indulging in violence.
The Judges were seized of a habeas corpus petition (HCP) filed by a fellow lawyer S. Vijay complaining about the arrest of four advocates K. Bharathi, K. Suresh, Mohan Babu and R. Raj Kumar and two law students Muthuselvan and Valarmathi during the intervening night between August 13 and 14, 2025.
Passing interim orders in the HCP on August 14, 2025; the Division Bench had taken a prima facie view that the arrest of the lawyers and students (who were providing legal assistance to the conservancy workers) was unlawful and therefore, ordered their release without subjecting them to judicial remand.
Subsequently, when the case was taken up for further hearing on Friday, the judges wanted to know if the police would be willing to drop all further criminal action against them. Mr. Ravindran said, it would not be possible since it would send a wrong message that the lawyers were above law.
On the other hand, advocates M. Radhakrishnan, R. Sankarasubbu and B. Mohan, representing the affected lawyers, accused the police of having intentionally assaulted the legal practitioners and said, the medical records of the victims would prove the brutal attack unleashed by the men in uniform.
They insisted a thorough probe must be ordered to ascertain the excesses committed by the police in their eagerness to quell the protest by the hapless conservancy workers who were aggrieved over outsourcing of conservancy work in Zones V (Royapuram) and VI (Thiru. Vi. Ka. Nagar).
The advocates said, the police had intentionally chosen to effect the arrest during night hours so that they could exert brute force against the conservancy workers as well as their counsel.
Published – August 29, 2025 08:14 pm IST
