Supreme Court Denies Savukku Shankar's Plea to Unseal Office

The Supreme Court today(January 20) refused to entertain a plea filed by YouTuber and Journalist Shankar @Savukku Shankar seeking to unseal his office in Chennai and also to direct the Tamil Nadu Police to return his devices seized during the investigation in connection with the allegations of assault and extortion by a film producer. The matter was heard by a bench comprising Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma. At the outset, Justice Datta questioned: "Who is this gentleman? On Friday, we passed an order, and he is again before us!" Justice Sharma also remarked that for every small inconvenience, the jurisdiction of this Court is being invoked. Senior Advocate Balaji Srinivasan said, " The High Court, while granting me interim bail, finds that whole thing is orchestrated against me. What they do is, there is a man in whose restaurant drugs are found. They set him up to transfer Rs.90,000 to one of my employees, and they arrested him. In the same process, they seal my office, which they have no power. If I can place the bail order on record." However, Justice Sharma said that the Court will not entertain the plea. "No, very sorry. You please go to the learned magistrate. If he does not pass an order, let the High Court look into it." "Having granted the liberty by the High Court to approach the Judicial Magistrate concerned seeking appropriate relief, we are not inclined to interfere," the Court ordered. When Srinivasan asked if the Court could direct that his application be decided expeditiously, Justice Datta questioned if this was the purpose for which the present plea was filed. Srinivasan replied that he thought he had a case. Justice Sharma responded: "Please don't mind. You thought you had a case just because we had earlier interfered." To this, Srinivasan responded that this plea was filed much earlier. Justice Datta told the advocate that in this order uploaded last Friday, the Court has included two Supreme Court judgments which talk about the scope of interference by the writ Court.