JUDGMENT :

(Prayer: Criminal Original Petition filed under Section 482 of Cr.PC to call for the records pertaining to impugned FIR dated 06.11.2017 registered against the petitioner in Crime No.349 of 2017, pending on the file of the 1st respondent and quash the same as illegal, arbitrary, abuse of process and without jurisdiction.)

This is yet another case which has come up for consideration before this Court where on the one side, the accused is claiming that Scheduled Caste and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, (hereinafter called as the Act), is being misused by giving a false complaint and on the other side, the victim claims that she has been subjected to economic boycott, social boycott and thereby, an atrocity has been committed against her, which is punishable under Section 3 of the Act.

2. The petitioner was working as the Vice Chancellor of Bharathiyar University. The Defacto Complainant is a Doctorate in Bio-Technology and she applied for the post of Assistant Professor in the Department of Bio-Technology at Bharathiyar University. According to the defacto complainant, this post was ear-marked for SC Arunthathiyar Women candidate. According to the 2nd respondent, she possessed all the qualifications for being appointed as the Assistant Professor in the Department of Bio-Technology. However, the University proceeded to appoint a Male SC Candidate, which according to the defacto complainant is against the recruitment rules.

3. The further grievance of the defacto complainant is that she was selected for the post of Dr.D.S.Kothari Post Doctoral Fellowship and this research fellowship tenure is for a period of five years and the defacto complainant would have earned fellowship amount of Rs.46,500/- + HRA per month. The Defacto Complainant had also submitted the verification proforma to the Registrar on 27.06.2017 through the mentor Dr.V.Balachander, Department of Human Genetic and Molecular Biology. Even the final selection list of Post Doctoral Fellowship for workmen (2017-2018) carried the name of the Defacto Complainant in Sl.No.23. However, the petitioner deliberately deprived the 2nd respondent of the fellowship by writing letters to University Grant Commission (UGC) to cancel the consideration of the name of the 2nd respondent. Due to this, the 2nd respondent was deprived of her fellowship and she was asked to change the institute and the Mentor. When this was questioned by the 2nd respondent, the petitioner as the Vice Chancellor did not even permit her to enter into the Section and directed the staffs not to give any answers to the 2nd respondent about the Fellowship. This according to the 2nd respondent amounts to economic boycott.

4. The further grievance of the 2nd respondent is that her husband was working as a Driver at Bharathiyar University and he was stripped of his job. Admittedly, the husband of the 2nd respondent belongs to backward community and he lost his job only because of the Inter-caste Marriage with the 2nd respondent. The 2nd respondent had also alleged in the complaint that she was treated as a untouchable person and she was insulted within public view by the petitioner. Based on the complaint given by the 2nd respondent, respondent police registered an FIR against the petitioner for an offence under Sections 3(1) (za) (E), 3(1)(r), 3(2)(va) of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act, 2015.

5. Mr.A.Ramesh, learned Senior Counsel appearing on behalf of learned counsel for the petitioner, has made the following submissions :-

(a) Even if all the allegations made in the FIR are taken as it is, no offence has been made out against the petitioner under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes Act.

(b) The entire incident is said to have taken place between June to August 2017 and the complaint itself came to be given only on 06.11.2017 and it has been registered on the same day even without a preliminary enquiry, more particularly, due t