Madras High Court quashes election bribery case booked against Vedasandur DMK MLA

Madras High Court quashes election bribery case against DMK MLA S. Gandhirajan due to legal infirmities in FIR.

The Madras High Court has quashed an election bribery case registered against Vedasandur MLA S. Gandhirajan of DMK on the ground that the police had failed to obtain the permission of the jurisdictional judicial magistrate before registering the First Information Report (FIR) for the non-cognisable offence.

Justice G.K. Ilanthiraiyan held that, before registering the FIR under Section 171E (bribery) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) during the Legislative Assembly election campaign on April 3, 2021; the police ought to have obtained the Magistrate’s permission as required under Section 155 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (Cr.P.C.). 

However, in the present case, the FIR had been booked mechanically, he said and quashed the charge sheet filed against the MLA by the Eriodu police in Dindigul district. The judge agreed with the MLA’s counsel K. Muthu Ganesa Pandian that the prosecution case suffered from a few other legal infirmities too.

Pointing out that the offences with which the MLA had been charged were punishable with less than one year of sentence, the judge said, in such a case, the charge sheet ought to have been filed within one year as mandated under Section 468 of Cr.P.C. The police had miserably failed to stick to the statutory time limit, he added.

A charge sheet dated June 15, 2023 had been filed before the jurisdictional magistrate only on February 1, 2024, much beyond the statutory limitation period of one year from the date of registration of FIR, the judge said and highlighted that the alleged offence of unlawful assembly, under Sections 141 and 143 of the IPC, too had not been made out against the MLA. 

He also stated that mere assembly of five or more persons with a common object would not be sufficient to attract the offence unless their object falls within the categories mentioned in Section 141 of IPC. “When the common object of the assembly does not fall within any of the categories specified under Section 141 of IPC, even if the number of the assembly is more than five, the act alleged will not attract the offence of unlawful assembly,” he wrote.

The case against Mr. Gandhirajan was booked on the basis of a television news report that his partymen had paid money to women voters who had taken aarthi during his election campaign at Thottanpatti railway colony on April 1, 2021. A Block Development Officer, leading an election flying squad, had lodged the complaint after watching the news clip circulated on social media.