Bail pleas of ex-minister, official dismissed in suicide case

The Madras High Court today dismissed the bail pleas of former minister Agri Krishnamurthy and an official of Agro engineering department who were arrested in connection with the alleged suicide of a department official.
Holding that investigation was at a crucial stage, Justice K.Kalyanasundaram of the Madurai bench of the HC rejected the bail applications of the former minister and Chief Engineer Senthil after recording the submissions of the CB-CID DSP's counter and hearing the government advocate's plea that some more officials at junior level had to be interrogated.
The government advocate submitted that the former minister, being an influential person, could tamper with the evidence. Besides the charges levelled against them were of serious nature and bail could not be granted at this stage.

In his counter, DSP Prabhaharan said the process of filling 10 driver posts in Tirunelveli district was conducted on August 16 last. The Collector, who is the head of the three-member committee, approved the list of selected candidates and deceased Muthukumarasamy, who was in charge of the Executive Engineer post, issued the appointment orders, he said.
He alleged that after he issued the appointment orders, the former Minister and the Chief Engineer pressurised Muthukumarasamy to pay a bribe of Rs.1.75 lakh per candidate for seven candidates. The deceased could not collect the money from the selected candidates. He had arranged for loan from his 'GPF' to the tune of Rs.Six lakh, and for the remaining amount, he tried to arrange for loan.

At the instance of the former minister, the Chief Engineer told Muthukumarasamy that in case of non-payment of the bribe amount, he would face the consequences, he alleged.

The DSP said Muthukumarasamy could not bear the pressure and committed suicide by leaping before the Dadar Express train on February 20. Statement of witnesses and call data record of the accused (petitioner) and deceased corroborated the allegation against him. The statement of Muthukumarasamy's wife also corroborated with the call data records and statement of other witnesses, he said.
The DSP said the railway police did not register it as a case of accident. The petitioner had drawn imaginary conclusions about the investigation of railway police.

In his counter, he said there was also enough evidence to prove that the petitioner had criminally conspired to fix Rs.1.75 lakh per post of driver's appointment in agriculture department. The Chief Engineer and the minister had conspired in the entire bribe, the DSP said.