The Kerala High Court said on Thursday that it will order the outlawed Popular Front of India (PFI) to pay the state government the over Rs 5 crore compensation that KSRTC is requesting for damages to its buses and a decrease in services during the hartal on September 23. The former state general secretary of the organisation, Abdul Sathar, will be declared a party in all criminal proceedings filed across the state in connection with the hartal-related violence and property damage, the court further remarked, according to attorney Deepu Thankan, who represented KSRTC.
In addition, a division bench of Justices A K Jayasankaran Nambiar and Mohammed Nias C P stated it would be ordering that no one charged in instances involving hartal-related violence be allowed bail until they pay the price of the damages they are accused of having caused, according to attorney Thankan. In its argument, the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) argues that the high court’s ruling that flash hartals are forbidden and must be announced seven days in advance was broken by the declaration of the hartal.
According to the appeal, the firm claimed that business as usual had resumed despite the lack of a pre-advance notice and police assurances that peace and order would be maintained. 58 buses had their seats damaged and their windscreens smashed during the hartal, according to the transport administration. Ten workers also reportedly suffered injuries.
In addition, it argued in court that despite being in a dire financial situation previously, the expense of fixing its buses, the money lost while they were being fixed, and the reduction in service on September 23 owing to the hartal resulted in a total financial loss of Rs. 5,06,21,382. It is argued that because the KSRTC suffered a significant loss as a result of the offenders’ egregiously unlawful and terrifying act against the defenceless public, those responsible should be held accountable.
In its motion for an order directing PFI to make up the loss of more than Rs 5 crore sustained by the corporation, KSRTC said that individuals who called for the hartal had a right to get compensation for their loss and that they couldn’t shirk their duty to pay KSRTC damages. The state-wide hartal was called by PFI and Sathar, who reportedly fled afterward, and the high court on September 23 started a lawsuit against them for allegedly engaging in contempt of court.
In a statement he released on Wednesday, Sathar claimed that PFI had been disbanded as a result of the Home Ministry’s decision to outlaw it. He made the comments just hours before being arrested the next day. Over 100 PFI leaders were detained last week after raids were conducted at 93 sites in 15 states throughout the nation by multi-agency teams, led by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), on suspicion of sponsoring terrorism. 22 arrests were made overall, with the majority being in Kerala, where the PFI has some sizable financial resources.
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