Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, Justice Sanjay Vijaykumar Gangapurwala, has assigned Justice C.V. Karthikeyan as third judge in the Habeas Corpus petition seeking release of Tamil Nadu Electricity Minister V. Senthil Balaji, to .
Justice Karthikeyan will act as a tie-breaker judge on the Habeas Corpus petition filed by S. Megala, wife of Senthil Balaji, who was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for his alleged involvement in the cash-for-job case.
On July 4, the Supreme Court had directed the Chief Justice of Madras High Court to assign the case to a three-Judge Bench on whether Balaji could be released on the basis of a Habeas Corpus petition. The Bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Dipankar Datta had further listed the petitions filed before it for hearing on July 24.
The Apex Court passed the orders after the Madras High Court delivered a split verdict on the plea.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Bench of Justice J. Nisha Banu and Justice Bharatha Chakravarthy of Madras High Court had delivered a split verdict on the petition and placed the matter before Chief Justice Gangapurwala for further orders.
While Justice Banu rejected the ED’s plea seeking Balaji’s police custody under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), Justice Chakravarthy held that the Habeas Corpus petition was not maintainable.
Ruling that the Habeas Corpus petition was maintainable, Justice Bhanu contended that ED was not entrusted with the powers to seek police custody under PMLA. She further dismissed the ED’s application seeking to exclude the period of treatment undergone by Balaji while calculating the period for custodial interrogation.
Justice Chakravarthy ruled that the Habeas Corpus plea was not maintainable in this case since it did not show that the arrest and detention of Balaji was illegal. The High Court judge further noted that in the present case, the petitioner had not made out a case to hold that the remand was illegal and thus, the HCP was not maintainable.
He further pointed out that since Balaji had been arrested, he has not been in the ED’s custody for even a day as he has been undergoing treatment from the day of the arrest.
The Judge directed that the period of treatment undergone by Balaji, starting from June 14 and till he gets discharged from Kauvery Hospital, should be excluded while calculating the period for custodial interrogation.
On June 28, a local court in Chennai had extended the judicial custody of Balaji by two weeks.