ED claims jailed T.N. Minister V. Senthilbalaji is hale and healthy, strongly opposes his bail plea on health grounds

Jailed T.N. Minister V. Senthilbalaji
| Photo Credit: Siva Saravanan S

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has vehemently refuted the averment of jailed T.N. Minister V. Senthilbalaji that “he is sick” or for that matter that he has any sort of medical issues that could qualify as “non normal.” It has also denied his claim of having extended his fullest cooperation during his custodial interrogation, in a money-laundering case.

Mr. Senthilbalaji had, on October 11, 2023, approached the Madras High Court seeking bail solely on medical grounds, and also reserved his right to seek bail on merits when the circumstances so warrant.

In a counter affidavit filed before Justice G. Jayachandran, through Special Public Prosecutor N. Ramesh, the investigating agency has also described as “completely and factually incorrect” the Minister’s claim that the money laundering case was booked on the basis of a “false case” of job racketing registered against him by the State police.

“The offence of money laundering is clearly made out. Hence, the plea as such that there is no direct allegation against him (the Minister) under paras 3 (a), (b) and 23 of the bail petition is incorrect and deserves to be rejected,” the investigating officer Karthik Dasari, told the judge in the counter affidavit to the Minister’s bail plea.

Recalling that the Minister was arrested on June 14, 2023, the officer said that the Minister had stayed in hospital until July 17, 2023. Thereafter, the ED had subjected him to custodial interrogation from August 7 to 12, 2023 on the basis of orders passed by the Supreme Court.

Thereafter, once again from August 12, 2023 till date, he was at the prison hospital “with all the facilities,” and hence his contention of having suffered incarceration for 117 days was an “unnecessary overemphasis,” the officer said and refuted the Minister’s other contention that his recovery from heart surgery was very slow.

The officer claimed that the Minister was found to be “absolutely hale and healthy” during his custodial interrogation and accused him of having been completely non cooperative right from the nascent stage of the investigation. Even during the search operation on June 14, 2023, he was evasive and behaved in a threatening manner towards the officers, he said.

“The Directorate strongly contends that the petitioner, with an intention to get bail, is attempting to create a smokescreen of some sort of illness again now, using his distant old past heart surgery, which happened more than three and a half months back. And when now he is very stable, hale and healthy but simply as a ruse to get bail, has come up with this narrative of illness and continued medication,” the counter affidavit read.

Translation of documents

The affidavit also stated that despite being proficient in English, the Minister intentionally demanded translation of English documents into Tamil, just because the ED officials were not very very fluent in Tamil. “This establishes his intention to thwart the smooth flow of the investigation,” the officer added.

Further, “it is humbly submitted that this is a case where the accused is an extremely powerful and influential personality. In spite of having been arrested under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and being in judicial custody, still the petitioner continues as a Minister…. It is almost certain event that he will influence or even attempt to threaten the witnesses, if released on bail,” Mr. Dasari said.

Since the Minister’s brother Ashok Kumar, a co-accused person in the case has been absconding for a long time, the ED said that the prosecution might suffer if the Minister was given on bail.