P. Balakrishna Reddy. File
| Photo Credit: B. Jothi Ramalingam
The Madras High Court on Wednesday, July 3, 2024 set aside the conviction and three year sentence imposed by a trial court in 2019 against the then Youth Welfare and Sports Development Minister P. Balakrishna Reddy in a 1998 rioting case related to protests against illicit arrack in Krishnagiri district.
Justice G. Jayachandran allowed the appeals preferred by the former Minister and 15 other convicts against the verdict passed by a special court for MP/MLA cases in Chennai in January 2019 and held that the trial court had erred in convicting them despite lack of credible evidence.
His conviction had created ripples in the political circles in 2019 since he suffered disqualification from continuing in the then AIADMK Cabinet on having been sentenced to more than two years. He chose to resign after the trial court verdict.
The then Minister, however, did not have to go to jail because the trial court had suspended his sentence until all 16 convicts in the case prefer appeals before the High Court within a stipulated time.
While 13 of them filed a joint appeal, the former Minister and two others, C.V. Venkataramanappa and M. Govinda Reddy, filed individual appeals before the High Court.
Though the former Minister made frantic efforts in 2019 to get the conviction stayed in order to rejoin the Cabinet, Justice V. Parthiban (since retired) of the High Court had in 2019 refused to stay even the sentence. When the sentence itself was not being stayed, there would be no question of staying the conviction, the judge said.
Then, the judge had taken serious note of government buses and police vehicles having been damaged and set to fire during the 1998 riots at Bagalur village near Hosur. Then, a protest to condemn alleged police inaction against illicit arrack sellers had turned violent.
“The appellant may not have been an MLA in 1998 but what he had done, which was proved in the trial court, was an affront to the rule of law. This court is unable to comprehend as to how a yesteryear law breaker can claim to continue as law framer,” Justice Parthiban had said while denying interim relief.
Subsequently, the Supreme Court stayed the sentence and thereafter, the High Court began final hearing on the criminal appeals filed by all 16 convicts.
