India News | HC Directs Spl Court to Furnish Documents to ED on DMK Min. Case

Chennai, Mar 31 (PTI) A division bench of the Madras High Court has directed the Special Court for cases against MPs and MLAs here to furnish certain documents required by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to proceed with probing the corruption charges against Tamil Nadu Electricity Minister V Senthil Balaji.

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The bench of Justices P N Prakash and A A Nakkiran gave a direction to this effect while allowing three petitions from the ED, on March 30.

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Balaji, now in the DMK, was the Transport minister in the AIADMK government, led by late J Jayalalithaa sometime during 2011-2015. It was alleged he had received huge amounts as bribe from various persons for appointing them as drivers and conductors in the Transport Corporations.

In connection with these allegations, three FIRs were registered against him which culminated in charge-sheets being filed against him and they are now pending on the file of the Assistant Sessions Court (Special Court for trial of criminal cases relating to MPs and MLAs).

Since the charge sheets disclosed the commission of a scheduled offence under the Prevention of Money-Laundering Act (PMLA) and section 420 of the IPC, the ED registered a case against Balaji and others in July 2021 and took up the investigation and filed individual applications before the Special Court, seeking certified copies of certain documents.

The Special Court, by three separate orders passed in November, 2021 directed the issuance of certified copies of some documents such as final report, complaint and FIR and 161 CrPC statements. It, however, refused to grant the certified copies of unmarked documents. Aggrieved, the ED filed the instant three criminal original petitions.

Additional Solicitor General R Sankaranarayanan submitted that the foundation for the investigation under the PMLA is the material gathered by the police in the scheduled offence without which the guilty cannot be brought to book under the Act.

Senthil Balaji shifted to the DMK and won in the 2021 Assembly election and now he is the Minister of Electricity. Therefore, the police are reluctant to share the investigation material gathered by them with the ED, despite the mandate of Section 54-f of the PML Act, he contended.

Granting the plea, the bench quashed those portions of the impugned orders which stated that “certified copies of unmarked documents cannot be granted .."

It was open to the ED to follow the procedure of conducting inspection under Rule 237 of the PMLA and thereafter, file a fresh third party copy application before the Special Court, if so advised, the bench said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)