Justice Jeyapaul heard the matter after Justice R Regupathi reclused himself saying the lawyer representing the father-son duo had used the name of a Union minister to influence him.
Two weeks after a Madras High Court judge said attempts were made to influence his decision on the outcome of anticipatory bail applications by a medical student and his father in a marksheet scam, Justice M Jeyapaul today reserved orders on their pleas for July 21.
Justice Jeyapaul heard the matter after Justice R Regupathi reclused himself from the case saying the lawyer representing the father-son duo had used the name of a Union minister in a bid to influence him.
Arguing on behalf of the applicants -- Kriba Sridhar, an MBBS student of a Puducherry college, and his father C Krishnamurthy -- senior advocate B Kumar pointed out that according to the CBI, 120 cases of manipulation of marks had come to light, 90 per cent of which were from the engineering stream of Pondicherry University.
None of the students had been arrested then why the need to arrest this particular student, he asked.
Besides, as CBI had said it was in possession of original answer paper of Sridhar, recovered during a raid, there was no question of the accused tampering with evidence, he said.
Kumar contended that even according to the FIR neither Sridhar nor Krishnamurthy were involved in the manipulation. Their only crime was that they had paid to inflate the marks.
On CBI's contention that the father-son duo would be required to verify some documents relating to the scam as part of preliminary probe into the murder of V Jayaraman, a data entry operator in the university and an accused in the marksheet scam case, Kumar said they had already been questioned by police earlier.
CBI was on July 10 directed by the high court to take over the investigation into the murder of Jayaraman on a petition by his mother.
"Extraneous aspects should not be brought to deny bail," the lawyer said and pleaded for grant of anticipatory bail for the applicants.
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