Tuesday, May 31 2005 21:53 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Kancheepuram: A Judicial Magistrate court in Kancheepuram granted bail with third party surety of Rs 5000 to columnist and founder of Swadeshi Jagaran Manch S Gurumurthy, who presented himself before the court today (May 31, 2005).

A warrant was issued against him by a Magistrate court in Kancheepuram yesterday (May 30, 2005) in connection with his articles on the Sankararaman murder case.

Advocate Sankaranarayanan, lawyer of Gurumurthy, appealed to the Magistrate-1, G Uthamaraja, to withdraw the warrant, which was not executed on him so far and his client had now appeared the court voluntarily today merely knowing about the issuance of the warrant from the media only.

He said the offence against Gurumurthy was 'cognisable' one and there was no need to insist or seek bail.

When the magistrate told Sankaranarayanan to spell out the contents of the warrant, the lawyer said that he had not received it. He said that his client, being a law-abiding citizen, had volunteered to be present himself before the Magistrate.

The Magistrate stated that there was a clause in the warrant that he should be released on bail after executing the surety.

Later talking to reporters, Sankaranarayanan, explaining the sequences of events in the case, said that in December 2004 the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the Sankararaman murder asked Gurumurthy, to depose before them on facts pertaining to the case. Gurumurthy cooperated with the team fully, he said.

On January 22, an article was published in 'Nakkeeran', containing the excerpts of the deposition, adding passage falsely attributing to Gurumurthy.

A photo was also published of the deposition at the SIT office. On seeing this, Gurumurthy sent a request to the SIT to send him a copy of CD and documents as issued by them to 'Nakkeeran' and endorsed a cheque with it, Sankaranarayan said.

But the SIT returned the cheque and instead filed a complaint, lodged by the Chief Investigating Officer to the Judicial Magistrate-1, which was forwarded by the Magistrate to Vishnu Kanchi Police station, he said.

In March, 2005 end they again sent a cheque for Rs 60 as travelling expenses to Gurumurthy for appearing before the investigating team.

Gurumurthy filed a writ petition at the Madras High court stating that the SIT was acting in a manner that was suppressing the freedom of press. But the Government prosecutor had then stated to the court that they had no intention of proceeding in the case further, 'obviously with a view of stopping the grant of anticipatory bail to Gurumurthy.

But they had not filed any counter as far as we know', Sankaranarayanan said.

Later talking to reporters, Gurumurthy said that he came to know about the arrest warrant only from the media. 'I will move to court to get an order to put an end to the excesses of police against me when the court reopens after vacation'.

The Shankaracharya of Kanchi mutt, Sri Jayendra Saraswathi and his deputy, Vijayendra Saraswathi, are among the accused in the case.