Chennai: The POTA (Prevention Of Terrorism Act) court today (Sep 3, 2004) refused permission to withdraw cases against MDMK (Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) General Secretary Vaiko and eight others.

Dismissing the petition filed by the Public Prosecutor for withdrawal of cases against Vaiko and the others, the designated Judge L Rajendran observed that the Prosecutor's application for the withdrawal of cases was based on the order of the Central POTA review committee.

The reasons assigned by the review committee were "untenable" as the committee had not gone into the details of the case, the Judge held.

On September 1, the Judge had sought a copy of the communication from Tamil Nadu Government directing State Public Prosecutor (PP) for POTA cases to withdraw the case against MDMK leader Vaiko and eight other party functionaries and had adjourned the case to September 3 for giving its order on the petition for withdrawing the case.

On August 26, the Judge had fixed September 1 for delivering his verdict on the petition filed by the PP for withdrawing the cases and had directed all the accused to present themselves in the court.

Counsel for Vaiko, who was not in court, filed a petition under Sec 317 for dispensing with the MDMK leader's presence as he was undertaking a padayatra.

In the withdrawal petition, filed under Sec.321, the PP referred to observations by the Central POTA Review Committee, which said that expression of sympathy and even support for Sri Lankan Tamils, because of their linguistic and ethnic affinity could not amount to support of the banned LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam).

Besides Vaiko, others arraigned in the case are Madurai Ganesan, Azaghu Sundaram, Ganeshamoorthy, Veera Illavarasan, Bhoominathan, P S Manian, Sivanthiappan and Nagarajan.

Vaiko was arrested on July 11, 2002 and was granted bail on February 7 2004.

In its April 8 report, the review committee had held there was no prima facie case against Vaiko and others for the State Government to proceed against them under Sec.21 of the anti-terror law.

The State Government had directed withdrawal of the case in keeping with an August 13 order of the Supreme Court, given on a petition by Vaiko, who alleged that the State Government was not making any attempt to withdraw the case against him.