Madras High Court suspends order appointing one-man commission to probe police excess during Chennai conservancy workers’ protest

The Madras High Court on Tuesday (September 9, 2025) kept in abeyance an interim order passed by it on September 2 appointing a commission to probe alleged police excess during the quelling of the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) conservancy workers’ protest outside Ripon Buildings on August 13.

A Division Bench of Justices J. Nisha Banu and S. Sounthar kept the order in abeyance pursuant to a petition filed by the Greater Chennai Commissioner of Police, through Additional Advocate General J. Ravindran, to vacate the interim order passed by another Division Bench of Justices M.S. Ramesh and V. Lakshminarayanan.

The plea to vacate the interim order was listed before the Bench led by Justice Banu because it holds the habeas corpus portfolio at present. The previous Bench had passed the order on a habeas corpus petition filed by advocate S. Vijay against the arrest of fellow advocates who had assisted the conservancy workers.

Observing that the police can only arrest people for infraction of laws, and certainly cannot assault arrested individuals, that Bench had appointed a one-man commission, to be headed by the High Court’s retired judge V. Parthiban, to find out whether advocates and law students were assaulted pursuant to their arrest.

Since the police and the lawyers had accused each other of taking law into their own hands, the judges had felt that it was necessary to appoint the one-man commission to ascertain the events that took place in the intervening night of August 13 and August 14 when the police clamped down on the protesters.

The petitioner before the court had complained that the police had arrested a group of lawyers and law students, who were providing legal assistance to the conservancy workers, and assaulted them brutally because the law enforcing agency felt that it was the legal fraternity that was fanning the protests.

A woman lawyer and a law student too had appeared before the court and accused the police of having attacked them brutally.