Madras High Court reserves order on bail by S Ve Shekher

Chennai: The Madras high court has reserved orders on the anticipatory bail petition filed by actor-turned politician S.Ve.Shekher, who apprehended arrest in connection with a case registered against him for his alleged derogatory Facebook post on women.

Justice S.Ramathilagam reserved orders on the anticipatory bail petition filed by S.Ve.Shekher after hearing arguments from both sides.

During the hearing, the judge orally observed that why the police are reluctant to take action against S.Ve.Shekher when they have taken action against media people and why different approach was shown in the case of Shekher.

In his petition, S.Ve.Shekher, a member of BJP, submitted that on April 19, he had received a message from Thirumalai Sa. The said person, who has forwarded the message to him in his group, used to forward patriotic and spiritual messages regularly to his Facebook account. Normally, those messages used to be constructive and healthy always. Under the bona fide impression, as the message was from the said account, usually it will be good in nature, due to inadvertency by mistake, he had forwarded the said message without reading the contents and knowing nature of the said message, as usual, which resulted in overconfidence. Subsequently, the same was pointed out by his friend that the said content was abusive one, which was not at all accepted for him and condemnable in nature. Hence, out of his own volition, since he was against the said views found in the forwarded message, immediately, he removed the same, he added.

He said in fact, it has put him on mental anguish and he was totally upset. He was not for endorsing the views expressed in the said message, since he was also from a family that respects women and women journalists. In such a factual and legal position, with a malafide intention of making him small before everyone, due to personal vendetta and political vengeance, some mischievous people were spreading the screen shot/photoshop of the deleted post. By way of a letter and posting through press and social media, he had tendered his apology even though he was not personally responsible for the said wrong.