TN govt withdraws case against Nedumaran

Chennai, Jul 14 (UNI) The Tamil Nadu government today withdrew a writ petition filed by the previous AIADMK Government challenging a POTA Review Committee Order that no prima facie case was made out against Tamil Nationalist Movement Leader P Nedumaran and four others in connection with a case.

When the case came up for hearing before Mr Justice K Raviraja Pandian, government Pleader Raja Kalifullah produced a letter which said the government had decided to withdraw the petition.

Following this, the judge dismissed the petition as withdrawn.

A case was registered under POTA against P Nedumaran, Subha Veerapandian, Pavannan, A Thaiyappan and Sakul Hameed following their speech allegedly supporting the banned LTTE at a public meeting here on April 13, 2002.

They were in prison for 19 months. The UPA Government repealed the POTA in 2005. Under the repeal order, if the POTA Committee gave a finding that no prima facie case was made, then the case was deemed to have been withdrawn.

On April 15, 2005, the POTA Committee gave a finding that no prima facie case was made out against the five persons.

In May, 2005, the state government represented by DSP, Q Branch CID, filed a writ petition against the finding.

However, no stay was granted in the case.

UNI XR GM SI VC1902