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The Chingleput Ryots' Case was a prominent trial which took place in the then Chingleput District of the Madras Presidency in India between 1881 and 1883. The action of the th M. E. Grant Duff provoked outrage all over the Presidency. Indian nationalists frequently cited the case as an example of the alleged unjust rule of the British Raj.
In May 1881, a group of ryots in the then Chingleput district accused an Indian tahsildar of extortion and filed a case against him in a local court. The tahsildar tried to threaten the ryots with dire consequences and allegedly got the District Collector of Chingleput to prosecute them for perjury. However, the tahsildar was still convicted for tampering with official records and sentenced to rigorous imprisonment. The tahsildar filed a fresh appeal in the Madras High Court resulting in the reduction of the sentence from two to one year. Dissatisfied, the tahsildar appealed once again against the verdict. Though the Madras High Court refused to entertain a second appeal, the Governor of Madras intervened and issued an order on 31 May 1883 acquitting the tahsildar due to lack of evidence
The Governor in Council, after considering the further opinions expressed by the Judges of the High Court in this peculiar case, has come to the conclusion that it will be most consistent with justice to give the accused the benefit of the doubt raised by the subsequent evidence, and he is accordingly pleased under Section 401, Code of Criminal Procedure, to remit the remainder of the sentence
The District Collector of Chingleput who had allegedly shielded the corrupt tahsildar later acted as the Revenue Secretary of the Government of Madras.
The Governor was heavily condemned and criticized by the Indian press for acquitting the corrupt tahsildar. The Hindu , which had supported the ryots throughout the trial and even collected money to fight the case on their behalf, charged him with allowing the affair "to cast dirt on the fair face of British Justice". [1]
The incident was brought before the House of Commons and Sir John Gorst, the Under-Secretary of State for India was questioned by James Tuite, the British Member of Parliament for Westmeath North in February 1887.
Company rule in India was the rule of the British East India Company on the Indian subcontinent. This is variously taken to have commenced in 1757, after the Battle of Plassey, when the Nawab of Bengal Siraj ud-Daulah was defeated and replaced with Mir Jafar, who had the support of the East India Company; or in 1765, when the Company was granted the diwani, or the right to collect revenue, in Bengal and Bihar; or in 1773, when the Company abolished local rule (Nizamat) in Bengal and established a capital in Calcutta, appointed its first Governor-General, Warren Hastings, and became directly involved in governance. The Company ruled until 1858, when, after the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the Government of India Act 1858, the India Office of the British government assumed the task of directly administering India in the new British Raj.
The Madras Presidency or Madras Province, officially called the Presidency of Fort St. George until 1935, was an administrative subdivision (province) of India. At its greatest extent, the presidency included most of southern India, including all of Andhra Pradesh, almost all of Tamil Nadu and some parts of Kerala, Karnataka, Odisha and Telangana in the modern day. The city of Madras was the winter capital of the presidency and Ooty was the summer capital.
Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff, known as M. E. Grant Duff before 1887 and as Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff thereafter, was a Scottish politician, administrator and author. He served as the Under-Secretary of State for India from 1868 to 1874, Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1880 to 1881 and the Governor of Madras from 1881 to 1886.
The Suryanelli rape case refers to a case of kidnapping and subsequent rape of a 16-year-old school girl from Suryanelli, Kerala, India, in 1996. The girl was allegedly lured with the promise of marriage on 16 January 1996 and kidnapped. She was allegedly raped by 37 of the 42 accused persons, over a period of 40 days. The remaining had abetted the crime. After P.J. Kurien, the then Union Minister and later Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman belonging to UDF led by Congress party, was named, the issue was politicised, due to a then upcoming general election. Several women's rights activists like K. Ajitha and Suja Susan George, and women's organisations, like NFIW and Anweshi, have taken an interest in the case.
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AvadhanumPaupiah was a dubash, or interpreter in the service of the British East India Company. He was of Telugu origin.
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SirChettipunyam Veeravalli Rungacharlu, also spelt Rangacharlu, was an Indian civil servant and administrator who served as the 14th Dewan of Mysore from 1881 to 1883.
The Code of Criminal Procedure commonly called Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) is the main legislation on procedure for administration of substantive criminal law in India. It was enacted in 1973 and came into force on 1 April 1974. It provides the machinery for the investigation of crime, apprehension of suspected criminals, collection of evidence, determination of guilt or innocence of the accused person and the determination of punishment of the guilty. It also deals with public nuisance, prevention of offences and maintenance of wife, child and parents.
Chingleput district was a district in the Madras Presidency of British India. It covered the area of the present-day districts of Kanchipuram, Chengalpattu and Tiruvallur and parts of Chennai city. It was sub-divided into six taluks with a total area of 7,970 square kilometres (3,079 sq mi). The first capital was the town of Karunguzhi, with an interruption between 1825 and 1835, administrative headquarters were transferred to Kanchipuram. In 1859, the capital Saidapet, now a neighbourhood in the city of Chennai, was made the administrative headquarters of the district.
The Indian independence movement had a long history in the Tamil-speaking districts of the then Madras Presidency going back to the 18th century.
The Besant v. Narayaniah Case is a suite filed by Jiddu Narayaniah, father of J. Krishnamurti in 1912 against theosophist Annie Besant for the custody of his son. The case argued for Narayaniah by C. P. Ramaswami Iyer was won by him and was a cause célèbre of the time though Besant later appealed to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom and got a ruling in her favour. Besant and C.P. Ramaswami Iyer who were in opposing camps during the trial eventually became friends after the case got over and jointly participated in the Home Rule Movement.
The MV Seaman Guard Ohio is a floating armory ship owned by AdvanFort and used for storing weapons and security guards on private anti-piracy contracts. In October 2013, the ship was impounded and the crew and armed guards aboard were detained after it allegedly entered Indian waters with illegal arms without adequate permission.
Jayaram Jayalalithaa, commonly referred to as Jayalalithaa, was an Indian politician who was the six time Chief Minister of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. She was initially convicted for misusing her office during her tenure of 1991–96. Subramanian Swamy was the chief petitioner. Some of the allegations involved spending on her foster son's lavish marriage in 1996 and her acquisition of properties worth more than ₹66.65 crore, as well as jewellery, cash deposits, investments and a fleet of luxury cars. This was the first case where a ruling chief minister had to step down on account of a court sentence. Ultimately, in May 2015, her conviction was overturned, she was acquitted of all charges, and she then died before the Supreme Court of India reviewed the case in 2017.
TANSI land acquisition case was a sensational case against J. Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu, during 1991-96. Jaya Publication and Sasi Enterprises, the companies in which J. Jayalalithaa and her aide V. K. Sasikala had holdings, purchased lands of Tamil Nadu Small Industries Corporation (TANSI), a state government agency, in 1992. The case was filed by Subramanian Swamy and chargesheet were filed during the following DMK government headed by M. Karunanidhi in 1996. Jayalalitha and her aide, Sasikala were convicted in the lower court, which sentenced her to two year rigorous imprisonment and fined ₹50,000 on 9 October 2000. The case had political implications as Jayalalithaa was disqualified from contesting the 2001 Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election. Though Jayalalithaa's nomination papers were rejected, she took oath as chief minister after the victory of AIADMK in the elections. The Supreme Court disqualified her in September 2001, resulting in her stepping down and elevation of O. Panneerselvam as the chief minister. The governor of Tamil Nadu, Fathima Beevi, who administered oath to J. Jayalalithaa, was advised to step down by the union ministry, who also sent the report to the President of India.
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The Colour TV case was a legal case against J. Jayalalithaa, the late Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, a state in South India from 1991–1996. J.Jayalalithaa, her associate VK Sasikala, and her ministerial colleague T. M. Selvaganapathy were charged with misusing their office to buy colour televisions at a higher price than quoted, then receiving substantial kickbacks. Jayalalithaa, Sasikala, and seven others were arrested and remanded to judicial custody on 7 December 1996. The case and chargesheet were filed during the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government headed by M. Karunanidhi in 1998. On 30 May 2000, Jayalalithaa and Sasikala were acquitted while a lower court convicted Selvaganapathy and six others and sentenced them to five years of rigorous imprisonment with a fine of ₹10,000. It was one of the first instances where an ex-chief minister was arrested and sent to jail and one of the earliest examples of the conviction of a Member of Parliament in a corruption case. Selvaganapathy was a member of Parliament from the Tiruchengode constituency in Lok Sabha at the time of the verdict.
Sir Cecil Fabian BrackenburyKCIE CSI was a civil servant and bureaucrat who served as Chief Secretary of the Madras Presidency from 1935 to 1939. Brackenbury was Chief Secretary when the first elections were held in the Madras Presidency as per the Government of India Act, 1935 and had a warm and friendly relationship with C. Rajagopalachari, the Premier of Madras Presidency from 1937 to 1939.
The Madras High Court is a High Court in India. It has appellate jurisdiction over the state of Tamil Nadu and the union territory of Puducherry. It is located in Chennai, and is the third oldest high court of India after the Calcutta High Court in Kolkata and Bombay High Court in Mumbai. The Madras High Court is one of four charter high courts of colonial India established in the four Presidency Towns of Madras, Bombay, Allahabad and Calcutta by letters patent granted by Queen Victoria, dated 26 June 1862. It exercises original jurisdiction over the city of Chennai, as well as extraordinary original jurisdiction, civil and criminal, under the letters patent and special original jurisdiction for the issue of writs under the Constitution of India. Covering 107 acres, the court complex is one of the largest in the world, second only to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. The four-storey administrative building attracts hundreds of litigants every day.