Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, June 14: In its first major move by Delhi since the DMK took over the reins of office in Tamil Nadu two years back, its minister for electricity, prohibition and excise V Senthil Balaji was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in the wee hours of Wednesday and within hours was admitted in the Government Multi Super-Specialty Hospital in Omandurar, Chennai, with heart problem.
Soon after he was remanded in judicial custody till June 28, he had to be rushed to hospital where he was advised a CABG-bypass surgery “at the earliest” after undergoing an angiogram test.
The arrest was part of an unfolding investigation into a murky job racket scandal, dating back to Balaji’s term as transport minister under the 2011-16 AIADMK government. Early on Wednesday, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin was quick to condemn the arrest, slamming the raid. He said last evening that raids targeting a minister’s chamber in the Tamil Nadu state secretariat was an unprecedented move.
The angiogram test was conducted after he was taken to the hospital for a medical check-up by the ED. Doctors at the Chennai hospital said the angiogram revealed a triple vessel disease.
Mr Balaji had broken down on the way to the hospital. Visuals of him weeping in the ambulance and later at the hospital, were widely circulated. “He is in the ICU. He was in an unconscious state and did not respond when we called him by his name. He is under observation… there is a swelling near his ear, doctors say there is variation in his ECG (electrocardiogram)… these are symptoms of torture,” DMK leader PK Sekar Babu alleged. “Senthil Balaji is undergoing treatment,” said Tamil Nadu Sports Minister and DMK Youth Wing chief Udhayanidhi Stalin. “We would face it legally. The DMK will not be cowed down by the BJP’s intimidation.”
Recently, Income Tax (IT) authorities searched the properties of Balaji’s associates across the state. This came after the Supreme Court allowed the Enforcement Directorate to continue its investigation into cash-for-jobs allegations against Balaji dating back to when he was a minister during the Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK regime. The Supreme Court had also allowed the agency to proceed with its investigation into the alleged money laundering case.
The ruling DMK had accused the BJP of targeting the party in panic after being unseated in Karnataka in recent assembly elections. Chief Minister Stalin slammed the BJP-led central government for the raids on Mr Balaji and said the party is resorting to “politics of intimidation”.
The ED on Tuesday raided Mr Balaji’s residence, his office at the Tamil Nadu Secretariat and the premises of his brother and a close aide in Karur district. Chief Minister Stalin condemned the searches at the Secretariat, saying that the BJP’s “politics of threatening their political rivals through backdoor tactics” would not work. Stalin further said conducting a raid at the Secretariat was a violation of the federal structure of the country.
Balaji’s wife filed a habeas corpus petition in the Madras High Court alleging that the ED had not followed due procedures before arresting her husband early on Wednesday morning. However, one of the two judges in a Division Bench recused himself from hearing the petition. Justice M. Sundar, the senior judge in the Bench, said Justice R. Sakthivel wanted to recuse himself from hearing the case. As per standing instructions issued by the High Court, with the approval of Chief Justice S.V. Gangapurwala, the case would now have to be listed for hearing before a Division Bench of Justices J. Nisha Banu and D. Bharatha Chakravarthy.
BJP MLA from Coimbatore South and the national president of the party’s Mahila Morcha (women’s wing) Vanathi Srinivasan refuted Stalin’s allegations and said the BJP as a political party had no role in his arrest. Ms. Srinivasan said the investigation of the alleged cash-for-jobs scam was driven by the Supreme Court. “The Supreme Court allowed the police and ED probe into the case and these agencies are working independently. If at all the political parties like DMK and its supporters are aggrieved, they have recourse to the law,” she said, adding that “the BJP as a political party has ‘0%’ role in driving the investigation.”
Ms. Srinivasan added that Staling when in the Opposition had in a public meeting in Karur declared that Balaji as corrupt. “After saying all that in a public meeting, Mr. Stalin is now claiming political vendetta in his arrest, only because he later joined the DMK and is a powerful Minister in the party’s government in Tamil Nadu,” she said. BJP spokesperson Syed Zafar Islam also reiterated that the arrest was based on evidence and following the Supreme Court’s critical observation about the case involving the former AIADMK leader, now in the ruling DMK.
Senthil Balaji was arrested after nearly 18 hours of questioning by officials of the ED in Chennai and raids on his home, and his office in the State Secretariat. What made Balaji’s position weaker in the case was the declaration by the accused of a “compromise” with the victims, which was interpreted as an indirect admission of guilt, substantiating the corruption and bribery allegations.
The case goes back to November 2014, when the state-run Metropolitan Transport Corporation announced a recruitment drive through five separate advertisements. They aimed to fill positions for 746 drivers, 610 conductors, 261 junior tradesmen, 13 junior engineers, and 40 assistant engineers. The allegations of corruption emerged following these recruitment advertisements.
A man named Devasagayam lodged the first complaint in October 2015, claiming he had given Rs 2.60 lakhs to a conductor, Palani, to secure his son’s employment in the Transport Corporation. His son never got the job, and his money was never returned. Significantly, the complaint didn’t implicate the then Transport minister Balaji.
In March 2016, a second individual, Gopi, filed a similar complaint. He alleged he had paid Rs. 2.40 lakhs to two individuals, supposedly related to minister Balaji, for a conductor job he never received. Due to the apparent police inaction, Gopi took his case to the Madras High Court, advocating for his complaint to be registered and investigated.
The High Court initially dismissed Gopi’s case and incorporated his complaint into the earlier case filed by Devasagayam. However, Gopi challenged this, arguing that Devasagayam’s case did not implicate the minister and that he was manipulated by the accused. Gopi’s demand was an investigation extending beyond the lower-rank officers and reaching up to the ministerial level.
Taking cognisance of Gopi’s plea, the HC ordered the Assistant Commissioner of Police, Central Crime Branch, to probe beyond the lower ranks. However, the final police report in 2017 implicated only the 12 individuals mentioned in Devasagayam’s complaint, excluding the minister and his relatives. It also omitted to charge these individuals under the Prevention of Corruption Act, further diluting the potential gravity of their offences.
Simultaneously, more complaints surfaced. V Ganesh Kumar, an employee of the Transport Department, alleged in 2017 that Balaji and three others had instructed him to collect Rs. 95 lakhs from job aspirants. These individuals never got their jobs, and the money was never refunded. A case was filed in 2018, but it again focused on criminal offences, omitting charges of corruption.
The next year, K Arulmani filed a similar complaint, claiming that Rs 40 lakhs had been collected from his friends, ostensibly for employment opportunities, and paid to the minister’s personal assistant. Yet again, the charges brought forth failed to address the allegations of corruption. Despite mounting allegations against Balaji, the absence of corruption charges in all official investigations led to one more petition calling for a more thorough investigation.
Meanwhile, Balaji’s political fortunes fluctuated. Following Jayalalithaa’s death in 2016, Balaji sided with her aide V K Sasikala’s faction during the ensuing AIADMK revolt for leadership. After being ousted from the AIADMK in 2017, along with Sasikala fraction, and backing her nephew TTV Dhinakaran during a crisis period, Balaji joined the DMK in 2018. He won a seat in his native Karur and gained a ministerial position in the new DMK cabinet in 2021 after the State Assembly elections.
Emboldened by Balaji’s rise, two individuals, including the minister’s personal assistants Shanmugam, and Sahayarajan, sought to quash the criminal cases against them, citing a “compromise” with the victims. The High Court complied with their request for one case. However, this so-called compromise, seen as an admission of bribery, proved to be a double-edged sword, attracting the attention of the ED.
Towards the end of 2021, the ED began to dig into the case. When it sought documents related to the various cases, the High Court permitted the ED to inspect but not to copy unmarked documents, a decision subsequently challenged. Furthermore, the dismissal of the case based on the “compromise” was also contested by an unsuccessful job candidate and an NGO called Anti-Corruption Movement.
This gave way to a slew of new legal proceedings, with the High Court ordering a re-investigation of the case and the ED issuing summons to the accused. But HC had quashed these summons and the matter was taken before the Supreme Court, where the court granted the ED the authority to continue their investigation and inspect related documents. Notably, the court also dismissed Balaji’s application for a Special Investigation Team. The Supreme Court noted that the “compromise” wasn’t just between the complainant and the accused; it represented a compromise of justice, fair play, and the fundamental principles of criminal jurisprudence.
