Overview
- A Division Bench of Justices AK Jayasankaran Nambiar and Jobin Sebastian held the state’s orders void ab initio and the 2016 certificates illegal and unenforceable.
- The court found the mandatory step of publishing the notifications in the official gazette was not followed and rejected the state’s claim that press or electronic publicity was sufficient.
- The quashed actions include government orders dated December 16, 2015, and February 17, 2016, and ownership certificates dated January 16 and April 6, 2016.
- The PILs by former forest officer James Mathew and A. A. Paulose challenged the retrospective regularisation; the court declined to examine alleged collusion to avoid prejudicing pending criminal proceedings.
- The case stems from ivory seized at Mohanlal’s Kochi home in a 2012 Income Tax raid, with related prosecution efforts contested; earlier, a plea to withdraw the case was rejected by a magistrate and later remanded by the High Court.