Hyderabad, April 24: The Andhra pradesh High court on Friday gave a split verdict on the rights of the citizens being subjected to lie-detector and brain mapping tests.
When a magisterial court permitted applications of the CBI to subject Satyam scam accused Ramalinga Raju, Rama Raju and Vadlamani Srinivas to the said tests they challenged it before the High court.
A single judge stayed the conduct of the tests and referred the batch of cases to a division bench. The bench comprising Justice A Gopal Reddy dealing with the provisions of the Criminal Procedure code said that the tests could not be part of the medical examination of an accused under Section 53 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Justice Samudrala Govindarajulu, however, upheld the power of the authorities relying upon similar pronouncements by the courts of Mumbai and Chennai.
In his judgment, Justice Gopal Reddy said that the tests will have to be declared as illegal as they violated the guarantees under Article 21 of the Constitution in as much as these tests were not permitted by any specific legal provision.
Given the disagreement, the matter will now be placed before the Chief Justice, who in turn would on the administrative side refer the issue to a third judge and his opinion would help constitute the majority view on the issue.
Court summons RR district deputy collector
Justice Ramesh Ranganathan of the AP High Court on Friday summoned the deputy collector of Rangareddy district to court on April 27. The judge was visibly irked when informed in the course of hearing how the said official was refusing to implement a court order.
Dano Vaccines and Biological Ltd has filed a writ petition complaining that the acquisition of their land near Ghateskar was contrary to law. The petitioner complained that the present acquisition was unjust and would cause great hardship to the company. It was stated that on an earlier occasion the official was required to hear the objections of the petitioner but failed to do so. The petitioner complained that when its counsel went to represent the manner, the deputy collector told him to present his arguments to his clerk.
Irked at his behaviour, the judge summoned the erring officer.
HC admits plea on powers of Motor Vehicles Taxation Act
A division bench of the AP High court comprising Justice G Raghuram and Justice Naushad Ali on Friday admitted a batch of writ petitions challenging the vires of the Motor Vehicles Taxation Act which empowered imposition of tax on construction equipment such as JCBs, excavators, graders, pavers, loaders, concrete pump, front and back loaders, pneumatic loaders, baby rollers, vibrating compactors etc.
Chilumair Ramesh and others filed the batch of cases complaining that the equipment mentioned above was not of motor vehicles and were used for construction and road-laying and thus do not come within the purview of the taxing statute. The petitioners pointed out that most of the same were in fact carried from place to place in other vehicles and as such could not be taxed as motor vehicles.
In some cases where the authorities have seized such vehicles the bench directed release of the same on payment of half the tax assessed. In other cases the bench directed not to seize the vehicles subject to the petitioners paying half the imposed tax.
–Agencies