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Why is that the wheels of prosecution grind precise dilatory erstwhile it comes to Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers accused of corruption, wondered Justice N. Anand Venkatesh of the Madras High Court connected Monday (November 10, 2025) portion dealing with a ₹98.25-crore corp declaration corruption lawsuit involving former AIADMK Minister S.P. Velumani and a fewer others.
Bewildered implicit the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) not having obtained authorisation to prosecute IAS officers K.S. Kandasamy and K. Vijaya Karthikeyan to date, contempt completing the probe successful the corruption lawsuit successful January 2024 itself, the justice insisted that the prosecuting bureau indispensable needfully explicate the hold to the court.
He agreed with advocator V. Suresh, representing anti-corruption organisation Arappor Iyakkam which had lodged the ailment against Mr. Velumani and others successful 2021, that the Tamil Nadu authorities request not person spent astir ₹30 lakh to construe astir 12,000 pages of documents present if the DVAC had obtained the authorisation against the 2 IAS officers earlier October 2024.
The justice pointed retired that the request to taxable translated copies was made mandatory by the Centre lone from October 2024. Hence, the DVAC was work bound to database retired the reasons for not having obtained the authorisation against the 2 IAS officers betwixt January and October 2024, particularly erstwhile the authorisation to prosecute Mr. Velumani was obtained from the Legislative Assembly Speaker connected February 12, 2024, helium said.
Lamenting that much often than not, the investigating agencies had to beryllium prodded by the courts to instrumentality each different enactment successful corruption cases close from the signifier of registration of First Information Report, the justice said, successful the contiguous case, the DVAC had submitted a petition to the Centre to assistance authorisation to prosecute the 2 IAS officers lone aft Arappor Iyakkam’s Jayaram Venkatesan filed the contiguous contempt of tribunal plea.
The petition was submitted connected August 30, 2025, but got returned for privation of translated copies of the vernacular documents submitted successful enactment of the request. Thereafter, connected the ground of a bid of interim orders passed successful the contempt plea, the DVAC had translated the voluminous documents by spending immense magnitude of nationalist wealth and re-submitted the petition to the Centre connected November 7, 2025.
When the justice wanted to cognize what the outer bounds for assistance of authorisation by the Centre was, Addiitonal Public Prosecutor E. Raj Thilak said, it was 3 months. The APP besides agreed to get instructions from the each investigating officers who had handled the lawsuit since January 2024 and find retired the reasons for the hold successful obtaining authorisation against the 2 IAS officers.
“The State shows velocity successful doing each happening else. The aforesaid velocity should beryllium shown erstwhile it comes to taking enactment against corruption too. Otherwise, radical volition suffer faith. In fact, enactment against corruption should get the archetypal priority. Everything other tin wait. Contrarily, what we spot is that the enactment against corruption gets the past priority,” Justice Venkatesh rued earlier adjourning the contempt plea.
