CHENNAI: Four days after chief minister C Joseph Vijay met Madras institute of development studies (MIDS) associate professor A Kalaiyarasan and regretted his wrongful detention over a fake social media post, Madras high court said, “an apology, however high its source, is not accountability”.“And a remedy that depends on the CM’s personal intervention is not a remedy at all,” Justice N Ramesh said. “…that gentleman’s eminence secured his release within hours and an audience at Secretariat; a common citizen with no access to power, taken at dawn on the same mistaken complaint, would have tasted the lock-up, the remand and the long road of a trial before anyone asked whether the account was even his,” the judge added.
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The measure of a police force is not how it treats the eminent when press is watching, but how it treats the unknown when nobody is.It is against that measure that handling of political speech—this case included—falls to be judged, the court said.The court made the observations while granting anticipatory bail to DMK councillor D Sudha, who apprehended arrest in connection with a criminal case registered against her for alleged derogatory remarks against the CM.“A govt confident of itself meets criticism with argument, mockery with performance, and abuse — where it truly crosses the line — with remedy, the law of defamation provides. Magnanimity towards political speech is not a grace the state may extend or withhold; it is what the Constitution exacts of those who hold power over their critics,” the court said.As to the alleged derogatory speech made by the councillor, the court said, “This state has a platform tradition older than the republic, whose great practitioners proved that Tamil oratory can wound without descending to filth; an elected representative owes the discourse at least that much. Her own party seniors told her as much at the venue, and to her credit she accepted it — publicly, and on oath, before any court asked her to.”
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