Litigant gets 4 weeks in prison for misleading court

Chennai: A division bench of Madras High Court on Monday sentenced a litigant to four weeks of simple imprisonment for furnishing false statements in his affidavits. A penalty of Rs 2,000 was imposed on charges of misleading the court.

The bench comprising Justice PN Prakash and Justice AA Nakkiran passed the direction on closing a contempt application filed by Siva Kumar under Section 15 of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971. The petitioner sought a direction to prosecute A Radhakrishnan for his illegal activities.

On recording the submissions, the judges ruled that the respondent is convicted in all four charges and is sentenced to undergo four weeks of simple imprisonment for each charge concurrently and pay a fine of Rs 2,000 for each charge, in default to undergo two weeks of simple imprisonment.

“On a conspectus of the facts obtained in this case, the respondent appears to be an interloper who has been using the judicial process for blackmailing and causing annoyance to ordinary people in the guise of being a Good Samaritan. Hence, no sympathy can be shown to the respondent,” judges said in the order.

The petitioner submitted that the respondent had mentioned a false address in his Public Interest Litigations (PILs) filed before the HC. He had also lied before the court saying that he was the trustee of Kodhandaramaswamy temple, Sugavaneswarar Temple, Kamanatheeswarar Temple in Salem and Sakthi Vinayagar temple in Krishnagiri and alleged that the lands of those temples are encroached.

Since the Advocate General granted his consent to initiate the contempt case against the respondent, the court had heard the matter.

While hearing the case, the judges also pointed out that one of the PILs of Radhakrishnan was dismissed by the court since he arrayed 44 government officers as the respondents.