Fisheries varsity seems to have no time to pursue criminal case on illegal admission of over 40 students, says HC

The Madras High Court has expressed concern over the lack of progress in a criminal case booked for illegal admission of over 40 students between the academic years 2020-21 and 2022-23 in the four-year Bachelor of Fisheries Science (B.F.Sc.) course offered by Tamil Nadu Dr.J. Jayalalithaa Fisheries University in Nagapattinam.

Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy said while the university had taken every conceivable action against the students concerned by first rusticating them and then levying higher fees on the basis of court orders, the varsity staff involved in the crime seem to have not been punished.

“Even the criminal case is still in the First Information Report stage. The respondents (university Registrar and others) do not seem to have time to pursue the same,” the judge wrote while setting aside a demand of ₹6 lakh made by the university from one of the students in order to issue course completion certificate to her.

The judge pointed out that 37 students had filed individual writ petitions in the High Court in 2023 challenging the rustication orders passed by the Deans of Fisheries College and Research Institutes (FCRI) at Thalanayeru in Nagapattinam district, Ponneri in Tiruvallur district and in Thoothukudi.

While opposing those cases, the fisheries university had told the court that it had come to know about the illegal admission of students, who had not secured the required cut-off marks in their Class 12 examinations, only after the receipt of an anonymous complaint in May 2023.

An internal inquiry revealed that none of the 37 writ petitioners had been invited for/attended the online counselling process and none of them had even paid the counselling fees since they had scored much less than the required cut-off marks. Yet, they had been issued with admission cards.

The university accused its typist G. Immanuel of having masterminded the illegality by substituting the 37 writ petitioners in the place of other meritorious candidates who had got selected for the course but did not join the institutes because they had gained admissions in much better courses elsewhere.

Therefore, a departmental inquiry was initiated against the Typist as well as the Controller of Examinations. Simultaneously, the university rusticated the students too. While disposing of their cases on October 30, 2024, Justice Anita Sumanth held that the illegality could not have been committed without petitioners’ connivance.

However, on finding that two of the writ petitioners belonged to the 2020-21 batch, 13 were from the 2021-22 batch and 22 from the 2022-23 batch, the judge allowed them to complete the course on payment of additional fees of ₹75,000 for every semester (apart from ₹16,000 they paid for each semester) of their course.

After the orders were passed on the batch of 37 writ petitions, the university found five more students to have got admitted illegally and directed them too to pay ₹6 lakh more. One of those five students challenged the demand by contendeing that she was not involved in the illegality and that she lacked the wherewithal.

The petitioner produced medical records to show that her father had been diagnosed of cancer. After taking all factors into consideration, Justice Chakravarthy held that it would be unjust to demand such a huge amount from the petitioner when there was no concrete material to prove her involvement in the crime.

The judge highlighted that no action was initiated against the petitioner when she was pursuing the course and that the demand had been raised only after she completed the course. “When the petitioner is now pleading economic inability… mulcting the entire sum unilaterally cannot be permitted,” the judge concluded.