Can't grant police protection to criminals, says HC; rejects plea from BJP worker facing 49 cases

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court refused to grant police protection to BJP State Secretary of OBC Wing K Venkatesh as he has 49 criminal cases pending in Andhra Pradesh for alleged smuggling of red sanders.

A person with a criminal background and having a threat perception as a result of his activities, the court should be very hesitant to grant police protection, wrote Justice N Anand Venkatesh while dismissing the petition.

If the court directs police to give protection to such persons, it will send a wrong signal to society and a normal citizen should not get the impression that criminals are also provided with police protection. If such an impression is created, they will lose faith in the existing system, wrote the judge. Assuming that this Court grants police protection to the petitioner, the order will be shown as a precedent in another case where a similar threat perception is encountered by another person with the same background.

The order passed in this petition at least will act as a precedent in the State, read the judgment.

Despite admitting that petitioner Venkatesh, facing a potential life threat from his rival gang, the court refused to grant police protection as will set a bad precedence, the judge wrote. The petitioner submitted that his source from the police department had alerted him that an accused Karuppasamy brother of Muthu Saravanan, a history-sheeter who died in a police encounter, has vowed to eliminate him.

“It was wrongly implicated that he was behind the encounter of Muthu Saravanan, hence his brother took the revenge plan,” said the petitioner.

However, the police have not taken any action against the representation seeking to grant police protection, only due to political vendetta since he is a BJP worker, said the petitioner. The police denied protection as the petitioner is a history-sheeter. Venkatesh is involved in various illegal activities including Kangaroo court using his close nexus in politics and 3 cases are pending against him in the State. Based on the intelligence alert, appropriate action has been taken against all those who are likely to plan revenge attacks, said the police.