Times of India: Madurai: Saturday,
October 08, 2016.
The Madurai
bench of the Madras high court has chided two advocates for misusing the Right
to Information (RTI) Act to blackmail people and later collecting money from
them. During hearing of a PIL filed by them last week, the court ordered that
the money they had received by blackmailing two ITI (Industrial Training
Institutes) principals be returned to them.
When the PIL
came up for hearing once again on Friday, the two advocates - Petchimuthu and
Kannan Viswanathan from Tirunelveli appeared before the court during which it
was informed that many FIRs were pending against them. The court chided them
heavily and asked, "How many RTI applications have you filed before the
government institutions?" They replied, "District collector and
forest office about quarries."
The two
advocates had filed applications before the principals of two government ITIs
in Tirunelveli and Tiruchendur respectively under RTI seeking details of
government schemes for the students.
After
obtaining information, they started threatening the principals saying there was
corruption in using the funds and thus demanded money if they shouldn't disclose
the same to others. Later, they received 2.5 lakh and 1.5 lakh respectively
from the principals of Tirunelveli and Tiruchendur ITIs and filed a public
interest litigation (PIL) before the court stating that government funds were
not properly used in the institutes and sought action against the principals.
Speaking to
TOI, former principal of ITI in Tirunelveli S Muthusamy said he received an RTI
application that sought information about schemes implemented in the ITI, which
he gave as per his superior's instruction.
"Following
it, the two advocates told me that there was corruption in the scheme of
modular employable skill. When I asked them where the corruption was, they were
not willing to explain, but demanded 5 lakh to hide the same. Regarding that, I
consulted with my advocate Murali in Tirunelveli who asked me to hand them the
money and to record the evidence. Accordingly, I gave 2.5 lakh to them in
January 2014 and recorded the conversation that took place between us,"
Muthusamy said.
He further
said the same advocates also received 1.5 lakh from the present principal of
government ITI in Thiruchendur C Murugan, which was also brought to the notice
of the court last week. After the court's intervention, the principal also
received his money.
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