A warm reception was accorded to the Kanchi Acharya, Sri Jayendra Saraswathi, on his arrival at the Sankara Mutt

here on Saturday. Earlier, he was received him with poornakumbam at Sarvatheertham near here around 8.15 a.m. BJP leader Subramanian Swamy and others received the Acharya at the Mutt. After the recent Puducherry court verdict in the Sankararaman murder case, the Acharya had gone to Tiruchendur and then to Tirupati, before returning here. Talking to reporters on the Mutt premises, Dr. Swamy said there was no surprise in the outcome of the case. The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, he said, should come in person and apologise to the Acharyas. An appeal against the verdict, which ac quitted the Acharyas, would be futile. At the same time, if the prosecution was keen on bringing the culprits to book, it could pursue it on a different line or hand over the case to a Central investigation agency. To a question on an electoral alliance for the Lok Sabha election, the BJP leade r said it would be decided by a high-level committee of the party. But it was ce rtain that the party might not ally with those championing anti-Hindu politics an d the Ram Sethu project. Chidambaram temple case Dr. Swamy said the Supreme Court had fixed December 3 as the deadline for the Ta mil Nadu government to inform it whether it would withdraw its Executive Officer from the temple or not. The court had made it clear that if the government failed to pull out, it would issue an order in favour of the Podhu Dikshithas, who run the temple through her editary rights. HC quashes proceedings against S Gurumoorthy Chennai | January 31, 2006 8:40:26 PM IST Madras High Court today quashed the entire case proceedings pending against S Gu rumoorthy, a columnist, before the Kancheepuram Court following his articles in connection with the arrest of the Kanchi Acharya in the Sankararaman murder case . Mr Justice M Jeyapaul quashed the proceedings while allowing a petition from Mr Gurumoorthy seeking to quash the chargesheet filed in the Kancheepuram Court. Mr Gurumoorthy was charged for offences under Section 176, 179 read with Section 193 of IPC and Section 14 of the Press and Registration of Books Act, 1867. According to police, with an intention to create false evidence and sidetrack th e Special Investigation Team (SIT) from the murder case, Mr Gurumoorthy wrote mi sleading articles in a English daily. The judge said punishable provisions of law contemplated under Section 14 of the Press and Registration of Books Act did not apply to false statements in articl es, either in dailies or journals. The petitioner had been wrongly charged based on total misconception of law for offences under Section 14 of the Press and Re gistration Act. Section 176 of IPC contemplated punishment for omission to furnish information o n any subject to any public servant. Section 179 stipuated punishment for refusa l to answer a public servant. The petitioner written articles expressing his poi

nt of view as a journalist. Irked by this, it appeared that the Chief Investigat ing Officer summoned him under Section 160 of Cr.P.C. and grilled him, which did not take the investigating officer anywhere, he added. Usually, journalists collected information from furtive sources and published it for public consumption. No one could attribute special knowledge to the journal ist about the information he had adverted to in the article, the judge said. The judge said the fact remained that even before the article was published, the Investigating Officer had got material information in the shape of the FIR and had also arrested the accused concerned. It was not as if the petitioner withhel d vital information, which led the investigating officer to grope in the dark. T herefore, the question of withholding vital information did not arise in this ca se. The petitioner was not supposed to answer any question relating to the article h e had written to the officer investigating the murder case. He was bound to answ er only with regard to Sankaraman's murder. He had answered that he knew nothing of the murder, the judge added. Recalling the Kanchi Sankaracharya Case By S Gurumurthy Published: 28th November 2013 06:00 AM Last Updated: 28th Novemb er 2013 02:44 AM When the Principal Sessions Court in Pondicherry on Wednesday (November 27) acqu itted the Kanchi Sankaracharyas, Jayendra Saraswathi and Vijayendra Saraswathi, and all the others charged with the murder of Sankararaman, my mind recalled the arrest of the Sankaracharya in November 2004 and the unprecedented vicious atmo sphere created by the Dravidian ideologues and parties, secular media and even l iberal intellectuals against the Acharya. They sat upon the Kanchi Mutt, held th e Acharya guilty and more and spread all kinds of unmentionable canards about hi m and the Mutt and hurt beyond words the millions of peaceful spiritual follower s of the Mutt, who cried in silence with no one to console them. No debate on the Sankaracharya judgment will be complete without recalling the v icious and hurtful discourse against the Acharya and the Mutt and how the ancien t institution and its faithful underwent the all round assault and pain silently . When the entire spectrum of secular, human rights and liberal megaphones had t urned against the Mutt and the Acharya and desecrated them, it was only The New Indian Express which stood for what it believed was right-- namely that the Mutt and the Acharya were being hounded without basis and the case itself was ground less. The judicial verdict exonerating the Acharyas and all the others charged w ith the crime implies that the entire case was misdirected. But, based on counter investigation, The New Indian Express said so within days of the arrest of the Acharya. The Case Is Dead. Who Will Do The Funeral And When? This was the title of third of the five articles on the Sankaracharya case that appeared in The New Indian Express. This article appeared on November 24, 2004, exactly 12 days after the seer s arrest on the auspicious Deepavali day. The artic le opened thus: On counter investigation, we found the case against the Sankarach arya not just slippery, but actually groundless from day one. Not just that. It involves a bit of fabrication too. Yes the fabrication to fix the Acharya. The p olice are running for cover. They may not give up yet and may fabricate more to put the case which is dead on life support system. But the case is irretrievably lost. The dramatic turn came on Wednesday in the Kancheepuram Magistrate court. The tw o criminals on whom the police had exclusively relied to name the Sankaracharya as an accused in the case have actually turned to accuse the police as the fabri cators of the case itself. The court judgment now pretty much says the same thin g. The New Indian Express carried four more articles in my name on the Sankarach arya case. The first article titled As the Sankaracharya stands like Abhimanyu [NI E 23.11.2004] captured the Dravidian political and secular media theatre in the

state which were hounding the hapless Acharya stung and stunned by the heinous c harge against him. The Acharya was damaged more by the false news items planted by the police which the willing secular media and Dravidian megaphones lapped up to defame and disc redit the Acharya. Another article titled Unless the Case is Reinvestigated, Just ice will not be Done [26.11.2004] detailed how on the procured testimonies of har dened criminals the state was telling the judiciary that the Sankaracharya was th e worst criminal . The fourth article dated 3.12.2004 was on how the case had ceas ed to be an investigation into a crime and had become a vicious campaign to demo lish the Acharya himself. The article ended thus: Even if, at the end, I am entir ely proved wrong, I cannot shirk my duty to alert the public and sensitise the a uthorities about the destruction of too many values involved in this investigati on which is gradually turning into a battle between the silent and silenced Kanc hi Mutt on the one hand and police and its associate, the media megaphones on th e other. It is no more an investigation into crime....it is now a larger design to defame and discredit the Mutt itself. The final article titled Will the Secular Media Heed Justice Reddy s Warning? appeared on January 14, 2005. This article was on the judgment of Justice Narasimha Reddy of the Andhra Pradesh High Court bef ore whom a frivolous writ had been filed by some labour union on the basis of me dia reports linking some deaths [which had taken place six years ago on the prem ises of a mill, from where the Acharya had been arrested] to the Acharya. Disposing of the writ, the judge said the petitioner swayed by the media did not want to lag behind in the unprecedented process of denigration of the Kanchi Mu tt, an ancient, prestigious and glorious institution with almost a 2,500-year hi story. He added that it was sad that an institution of such glory was targeted a nd persecuted in an organised manner in an independent country, by not only indiv iduals, but also a section of the institutions, such as the State and the Press . He also noted that the proponents of human rights, fair play and dignity to indi viduals and institutions have maintained stoic silence, adding a powerful section is celebrating or watching it with indifference the perfidy against the Mutt that had shocked the nation and beyond . He noted that the amount of disrepute and sacri lege inflicted on Sri Jayendra Saraswathi has no comparables adding that harshes t possible words were used directly or in innuendo against him and today he is sub jected to similar treatment as was Draupati in the Court of Kauravas . That was th e state of the Acharya and the Mutt when The New Indian Express stood for truth against tsunami of vicious campaign against the Acharya. The reward for these articles was an arrest warrant against me and almost a sear ch on The New Indian Express and even the Thuglak magazine, which had carried th e Tamil version of the articles. As usual the judiciary came to the rescue and p assed orders restraining the state. I was questioned by the Superintendent of Po lice who led the investigation. When I asked him why he was suspecting the Achar ya to be the offender, he said that the victim had been sending highly offensive letters to the Acharya and therefore he had a motive to eliminate him. I asked him whether he thought of the possibility of someone inimical to the Acharya eli minating the victim to put the blame on the Acharya. He was blank. I told him th at the criminal investigation has to exhaust all the possibilities before opting for one particular view. That is precisely what the police in the Sankaracharya case failed and neglected to do. The result was a huge and costly lapse -- and great hurt to a noble institution and to its silent and peaceful faithfuls. The Sankaracharya case verdict is a lesson for all-- the police, state, media and th e liberals --every one of them sided with the police and against the Acharya. Wi ll they now introspect?