Madras High Court reverses discharge of M.K. Alagiri from select provisions of law in land grab case
The Hindu
Madras High Court reverses order discharging M.K. Alagiri in land grab case, orders him to face trial.
The Madras High Court on Tuesday (March 4, 2025) reversed an order passed by a judicial magistrate in Madurai in 2021 discharging former Union Minister M.K. Alagiri from select provisions of law in a 2014 land grab case and ordered that he must face trial for those charges too.
Justice P. Velmurugan allowed a criminal revision petition filed by the Inspectof of Police, Anti Land Grabbing special unit, Madurai city, in 2021 against the discharge of the former Minister from certain provisions of law related to cheating, fraud and forgery.
The case had been booked on the basis of a complaint related to alleged grabbing of a temple land for an engineering college established by M.K. Alagiri Educational Trust at Sivarakottai in Madurai. The police had registered the First Information Report against him during the AIADMK regime.
In 2021, while disposing of his plea to discharge him from all charges, a judicial magistrate in Madurai discharged Mr. Alagiri from the charges under Sections 420 (cheating), 423 (fraudulent execution of deed), 465 (forgery) and 471 (illegal use of forged document) of the Indian Penal Code alone.
The Magistrate, however, insisted that he must face the charges under Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 408 (criminal breah of trust) of the IPC. Therefore, he too, had filed a criminal revision before the Principal District and Sessions Court in Madurai against the magistrate’s refusal to discharge him from all charges.
When the prosecution’s criminal revision was listed before Justice N. Anand Venkatesh of the Madras High Court on September 7, 2023, the judge felt that it would be appropriate to hear it along with the former Minister’s criminal revision plea since both were closely connected.
Therefore, he directed the High Court Registry to obtain the entire case records from the Principal District Court in Madurai, renumber that revision petition and list it along with the plea pending in the High Court. Accordingly, the former Minister’s petition was transferred from the district court to the High Court and renumbered in 2024.
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