CHENNAI: A city court on Monday permitted the Enforcement Directorate to take custody of DMK Minister V Senthil Balaji, who was arrested on June 14 in connection with a money laundering case, for five days.
Following the Supreme Court’s verdict favouring the Central agency’s right to claim custody of an accused person for interrogations, the agency moved a petition before the principal sessions court which is the special court for ED cases.
Principal sessions judge S Alli heard the counsels for both sides before granting custody till August 12 for interrogations.
She declined to allow private doctors, as sought by the counsel for the minister, to have access to him twice a day to check up on his health conditions.
Senthil Balaji is currently imprisoned at the Central Prison, Puzhal, near Chennai after he was discharged from a private hospital where he underwent a bypass surgery.
Dramatic scenes unfolded soon after his arrest on June 14 as he had developed chest pain and was admitted to the Govt Muti-Specialty Hospital at Omandurar Estate where the doctors diagnosed him as having blocks in the heart and recommended immediate surgery.
Hearing a habeas corpus petition filed by his wife Megala, the Madras High Court ordered him to be shifted to Kauvery Hospital for surgery, though ED had vociferously objected to it.
A division bench of the court delivered a split verdict on the contentious issue of the right of ED to take an accused person into its custody for interrogation. A third judge, for whom the matter was referred, concurred with one of the judges of the division bench ruling in favour of ED and rejecting the contentions of illegality in the arrest.
This ruling is upheld by the Supreme Court as well.
Senthil Balaji landed on ED’s net following a case registered by the agency on the trails of the cash-for-jobs scam, through which, he was alleged to have received proceeds of crime (tainted money).