Chennai: Two senior Ministers in the M K Stalin Cabinet suffered setbacks on Wednesday with the Madras High Court directing them to face trial in cases registered against him more than a decade ago on charges of amassing wealth disproportionate to their known sources of income. Finance Minister Thangam Thennarasu and Revenue Minister KKSSR Ramachandran, who were both members of the M Karunanidhi cabinet too during 2006-11, were booked in corruption cases by the erstwhile AIADMK regime in 2012 and 2011 respectively. Their family members were also arraigned in the case.
However, after the DMK returned to power, they were discharged from the cases by the trial court on the basis of fresh reports filed by the prosecuting agency – the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption.
Justice N Anand Venkatesh of the Madras High Court, however, took up suo motu criminal revision petitions against the Ministers. Passing orders, he pointed out that he had never come across any case other than those against politicians in which the prosecution has done a volte face and given a clean chit to the accused. “This points to a clear nexus between the DVAC and the politicians,” the judge said in separate orders while remitting the cases against the two Ministers back to the respective trial courts for proceedings. The trial, the judge has held, should be conducted on a day-to-day basis and completed expeditiously.
“To the best of this court’s knowledge, this modus operandi to detonate criminal prosecutions against politicians by misusing the power of further investigation under Section 173(8) of the Code of Criminal Procedure is homegrown in the State of Tamil Nadu and does not find a parallel anywhere in this country,” the judge commented.
“What is evident from the above is a clearly orchestrated plan. Once the two Ministers were back to power, the DVAC officials decided or were told by their higher ups to find ways and means to ensure that the prosecutions were torpedoed. A perfect plan was thus drawn up... Unfortunately, the special court did not notice this and fell into or was willing to fall into an error in discharging the accused,” Justice Venkatesh noted.
