Rahul Gandhi interacts with tea estate workers in Kerala's Idukki
Idukki (Kerala) (PTI): Congress leader Rahul Gandhi interacted with women tea pluckers at an estate in Peerumade here on Saturday.
The Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, on his way to board a helicopter in the morning, noticed a group of women plucking tea leaves at the Glenmary estate and asked his convoy to stop before approaching them for an interaction.
Accompanied by Congress MPs K C Venugopal and Dean Kuriakose, Gandhi spoke to the workers and enquired about their wages and the tea plucking process.
The women workers explained to the Congress leader the nature of their work and showed him how the tea-plucking machine is used.
After the interaction, Gandhi took photographs with the workers before leaving the place.
Gandhi had arrived at Marian College in Kuttikkanam to interact with students on Friday.
He had stayed at a resort in Peerumade on Friday night and left for Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday morning to attend various events.
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Court can reject anticipatory bail but cannot direct accused to surrender: SC
New Delhi (PTI): A court can reject anticipatory bail of an accused but it has no jurisdiction to direct him to surrender before the trial court, the Supreme Court has said.
A bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and Ujjal Bhuyan made the observation while hearing a plea filed by a man accused of cheating and forgery.
"If the court wants to reject the anticipatory bail, it may do so, but the court has no jurisdiction to say that the petitioner should now surrender," the bench said.
The Jharkhand High Court had rejected anticipatory bail plea of the accused and asked him to surrender and seek regular bail.
In this case, a complaint had been filed before a magistrate alleging offences under Sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using forged document) and 120B read with 34 of the IPC, in connection with a land dispute.
The high court had dismissed the second anticipatory bail application of the accused on the ground that no new circumstances were shown.
It had relied on its earlier order rejecting his first anticipatory bail plea, in which the court directed the petitioner to surrender before the trial court and seek regular bail in terms of the decision in Satender Kumar Antil v. CBI.
The top court said such a direction was wholly without jurisdiction and said that if a court chooses to reject anticipatory bail, it may do so, but it cannot compel the accused to surrender.
