CHENNAI/BANGALORE, AUGUST 30: The father of one of the five Tamil extremists, Manikandan, whose release has been sought by bandit Veerappan in exchange for Kannada star Rajkumar and three others, today pleaded before the Madras High Court to prohibit the state government from handing over his son to Veerappan.After P S Annamalai of Pudukottai, father of 27-year-old Manikandan, filed the petition, Justice K Govindarajan directed the registry to ask the district judge in Tiruchi to send a magistrate to the Central Prison there to find out whether Manikandan was really unwilling to join Veerappan or not. The district judge should submit a report by September 8, the judge said.In his petition, Annamalai said the police met his son in prison on August 16 and directed him to file a bail application but he refused to do so. On August 21, the police told him that the cases against him would be withdrawn and the police would hand him over to Veerappan in exchange of Rajkumar. It was not known why the police was compelling his son to go and join Veerappan, he said.Annamalai said if his son was taken to the forests, his safety could not be guaranteed. He might be shot dead by the police in a false encounter. The government was not authorised to hand over his son to Veerappan and it could not be an instrument for an illegal act, he argued.``Why should I lose my son's life for the sake of release of Rajkumar? If the life of Rajkumar was precious to anybody, my son's life is equally precious to me. I am very much worried about the liberty and welfare of my son. He is not married and his clinical lab is kept unattended for the past eight months. In the old age, I have to depend only upon my son for my livelihood,'' the father said.Manikandan reportedly belongs to the Tamil National Retrieval Troops (TNRT), an LTTE-trained militia, allegedly involved in an attack led by Veerappan and his men on a police station at Vellithiruppur in Erode district in December 1998.His detention under the National Security Act was revoked on August 14 in response to Veerappan's demand for his release. Later, the government decided to drop all charges against him and four other extremists as wished by the outlaw.The petitioner, however, contended that his son was only a sympathiser of the LTTE, who was first arrested in 1995 for putting up a poster of LTTE leader V Pirabhakaran. ``This was the starting point of the foisting of a number of false cases,'' Annamalai said, adding that his son had not been convicted in any case so far.The other militants whose release has been agreed to by the government are Sathymurthy and Muthukumar (both TNRT) and `Radio' Venkatesan and Ponnivalavan (both Tamil Nadu liberation Army).Meanwhile, the Karnataka government today said it would file its counter-affidavit on September 1 in response to the petition filed before the Supreme Court challenging the government's decision to drop charges under TADA against suspected associates of Veerappan.Karnataka minister for law D B Chandregowda told reporters here the state would tell the apex court about the ``compelling situation'' under which the government had to take a decision in the interest of maintaining law and order.The Supreme Court had yesterday granted a stay till further orders on release on bail of 51 suspected associates of Veerappan following a special leave petition filed by Abdul Kareem, father of a sub-inspector who was killed by the Veerappan gang in 1992.Chandregowda said ``the state still feels that dropping of charges under TADA, an act which has been annulled already, is well within its powers,'' he said.He said the government was yet to drop charges against the accused under the IPC but had made it clear that it would not press them before the court.
