The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Monday dismissed the petitions for a CBI probe into the case of fraudulent registration of Palani Math land. A Division Bench of Justices C.V. Karthikeyan and R. Sakthivel took note of the CB-CID’s status report on the progress of the investigation.
The report said 16 special teams had conducted searches at as many locations across six districts. A total of 207 documents, 12 mobile phones, three laptops, and eight other electronic devices including one hard disk, one DVR and six CPUs, audio records, and cash were seized. Six mobile phones were obtained through production memos.
As of now, 115 witnesses had been examined, including government officials. A total of 49 records from the Registration Department, 36 records from the Revenue Department, 23 banking records, and 62 call detail records and Internet Protocol Detail Records (IPDRs) had been seized. They had to be analysed. Furthermore, the CB-CID officers seized 55 records relating to the property, its administration, and the previous proceedings. They also seized CCTV footage from relevant locations, call details records, and IPDRs and were analysing the communications and banking transactions.
The court said that as the probe was still going on, it would not express any opinion. It dismissed the petitions of former Palani MLA K.S.N. Venugopalu Senapathi of the AIADMK, chairperson of Palani Municipality R. Uma Maheshwari Pradeep, and Annapoorani Sivakumar. It directed the CB-CID to proceed further.
Meanwhile, Justice K. Murali Shankar reserved orders on the bail petitions of three accused: Suspended Sub-Registrar Justin Manikandan Subramanian, and K. Vellathurai of Tiruppur and D. Sethupathi of Palani, the land buyers.
