HC impleads Perumal Murugan in PIL

Observing that the largest concern is extra-judicial groups wielding power to decide what is right and what is not and thus asking authors what to write, the Madras High Court today ordered issue of notice to Perumal Murugan, author of 'Madhorubagan', which has come under attack by certain outfits, on a PIL filed by a writers' forum.
The First Bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M.M. Sundresh, made the oral observations when the PIL filed by the Progressive Writers and Artists Association President S. Tamilselvan came up.
The petition had sought to declare as null and void the decision arrived at a peace committee meeting convened by officials to remove certain portions of the book.

Declining to go by media reports, the bench impleaded Murugan as a respondent, enabling him to narrate the sequence of events culminating in the meeting and the undertaking given by him.
Assailing the self-styled peace meeting and the 'undertaking obtained under duress and coercion' from the author, the PIL wanted it to be quashed and not to be enforced.
The judges wondered as to how the Court could pass any order with regard to the undertaking when it is not known whether it was obtained by force or whether there is any truth in allegations of compulsion.

However, disapproving of the peace committee meeting, the judges said the authorities must have advised the protesting groups to lodge complaints if they were aggrieved by the writings.

"The person who wrote the novel must be tested only before a court of law," they said, adding authorities should not play into the hands of extra-judicial groups.
These issues should not be determined by such groups of people, they said.
The bench also suggested that instead of limiting its prayer only to quashing or staying Perumal Murugan's undertaking, the PIL-petitioner should go into larger issue of freedom of expression and the threats it faced, so that the court could pass detailed orders with perspective.
Giving the background of the novel, the petitioner said it was published in 2010 and no one found anything objectionable. But suddenly on December 27 last activists represented by Hindu Munnani and other outfits objected to certain portions of the novel and started agitations and demonstrations and also burnt the book's copies in public.