MADURAI: The Madurai bench of the Madras high court on Monday dismissed petitions against Tamil Nadu director general of police and the chief secretary in connection with a Gutkha scam K Kathiresan, a trade union member, first moved the court in December seeking interim directions to restrain T K Rajendran from continuing as Director General of Police ( DGP ) and direct the CBI to constitute a special investigation team to conduct inquiries into the involvement of high-level bureaucrats in the gutkha scam.Subsequently, the same petitioner also filed another petition that accused the chief secretary, Girija Vaidyanathan, of perjury.In his petition, Kathiresan stated that the chief secretary had filed a false affidavit before the court and misguided it by stating that no documents pertaining to the scam were available in her office.According to the petition, when the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption wrote to the income tax department in 2017 seeking the documents, it was informed that they were sent to the chief secretary’s office. Later, the documents were recovered from the Poes Garden residence of late chief minister J Jayalalithaa.The petitioner stated that the then chief secretary had failed to disclose the Rajendran’s alleged involvement in the gutkha scam to the empanelment committee of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) while considering names fit for appointment of the Tamil Nadu DGP.Earlier, the court had directed the income tax department to submit before it, in a sealed cover, all communications from it to the office of the chief secretary.When the petitions came before the court for hearing, the counsel for the state submitted that they had submitted all available information with them and that there was no prima facie evidence with regard to the claims made in the petition and they were mere allegations.After perusing all the relevant documents and submissions, a division bench of Justice K K Sasidharan and Justice P D Audikesavalu held that the perjury allegations against the chief secretary did not hold water.On the petition against the DGP, the division bench observed that the petitioner had been repeatedly filing petitions targeting a single police officer and held that he was a mere name lender who had lent his shoulders for others to train their guns, directed at the police officer. "The petitioner had given it a name of "public interest litigation" to make it appear as if everything is in a larger public interest," the court held and dismissed the petition.

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