CHENNAI: Holding that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) cannot be held back from discharging its statutory duties, a division bench of Madras High Court on Monday refused to restrain the agency from summoning TR Paarivendhar, founder of SRM Group of Educational Institutions, for inquiries with regard to a money laundering case.
The bench consisting of Justices SM Subramaniam and V Sivagnanam, while dismissing Paarivendhar’s petition, said the ED authorities can go ahead with the money laundering proceedings initiated under the PMLA irrespective of an FIR in the predicate offence against him being quashed.
The ED had registered the Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) on the trails of an FIR registered by the Central Crime Branch of Greater Chennai Police regarding the alleged cheating of 142 MBBS aspirants to the tune of `88.16 crore by promising to provide them admission in the SRM medical college.
As per orders of the Supreme Court, the money was returned to the aspirants. The apex court also quashed the FIR against Paarivendhar alone in the predicate offence case. After appearing on a few occasions, he challenged the summons issued by the ED for further probe.
N Ramesh, the special public prosecutor for the ED, said the FIR was quashed only in the case of Paarivendhar and the proceedings against others were not quashed. He also said summons were issued only for investigation and no other purposes. The bench commented that money laundering proceedings cannot be allowed to “wash away” just because the predicate offence FIR was quashed.