Chennai, Sep 2 (IANS) The Madras High Court on Monday dismissed a writ petition filed by the owner of a group of educational institutions, including a medical college, against summons by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a case related to accepting donations for medical admissions.
A division bench of Justices S.M. Subramaniam and V. Sivagananam dismissed the writ petition filed by SRM University Chancellor, T.R. Paarivendhar, alias T.R. Pachamuthu, to restrain the ED from summoning him in a case registered by the agency based on donation for medical admissions in the SRM University in 2016, holding that the investigating agency could not be restrained from performing its statutory duties just because the Chancellor and the university had made a payment of Rs 88.66 crore to 142 alleged victims of cheating.
“Mere repayment of money to the victims will not wash away the offence of money laundering, if any committed. Still, the authorities are empowered to conduct an investigation by summoning the persons concerned… As such, the prayer of the writ petitioner is not entertainable,” it said.
ED’s Special Public Prosecutor, N. Ramesh told the court that Rs 88.66 crore had been taken from the accounts of a public trust run by the petitioner and his family members to bail him out of the predicate offence, and therefore, there was a necessity to investigate the matter in depth.
The Chennai Central Crime Branch (CCB) had registered a case against Madhan of Vendhar Movies, owned by the petitioner, in 2016 for allegedly cheating several individuals after receiving crores of rupees for their admissions into the SRM Medical College. The petitioner was also arrested.
Paarivendhar deposited an amount of Rs 85 crore to obtain bail and safeguard the reputation of the institution and held the position that he had not received any money directly or indirectly for medical admissions. Several petitions were moved in the Supreme Court and the apex court passed an order in 2017 for payment of Rs 88.66 crore to the people who complained that they were cheated.
The case against the institution for the predicate offence was quashed.
The ED had, however, parallelly initiated proceedings under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) of 2002.
Despite the quashing of the case, the ED continued to issue summons to Paarvendhar in 2022 and 2023. Stating that even his elder son P. Ravi was summoned, the petitioner said he feared there was every likelihood of the investigating agency abusing its powers. Senior counsel B. Kumar told the court that the ED authorities were demanding many documents including on the number of trusts run by him and his family members, the bank accounts of those trusts, and so on. The counsel for the petitioner argued that the question of invoking the money laundering law would not arise at all after the quashing of the case booked for the predicate offence.
However, the division bench disagreed with him and said it could not issue a blanket order in the nature of an injunction restraining the ED from summoning the petitioner or his family members and directed the petitioner to cooperate with the investigation and prove his innocence instead of approaching the court.
–IANS
aal/vd
Disclaimer
The information contained in this website is for general information purposes only. The information is provided by TodayIndia.news and while we endeavour to keep the information up to date and correct, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the website for any purpose. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk.
In no event will we be liable for any loss or damage including without limitation, indirect or consequential loss or damage, or any loss or damage whatsoever arising from loss of data or profits arising out of, or in connection with, the use of this website.
Through this website you are able to link to other websites which are not under the control of TodayIndia.news We have no control over the nature, content and availability of those sites. The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.
Every effort is made to keep the website up and running smoothly. However, TodayIndia.news takes no responsibility for, and will not be liable for, the website being temporarily unavailable due to technical issues beyond our control.
For any legal details or query please visit original source link given with news or click on Go to Source.
Our translation service aims to offer the most accurate translation possible and we rarely experience any issues with news post. However, as the translation is carried out by third part tool there is a possibility for error to cause the occasional inaccuracy. We therefore require you to accept this disclaimer before confirming any translation news with us.
If you are not willing to accept this disclaimer then we recommend reading news post in its original language.