CHENNAI: As the Supreme Court turns the heat on the Tamil Nadu government over the delay in trial in the cash-for-jobs scam involving former minister V Senthil Balaji, official data show that the special court conducting the trial in the cases is yet to serve summonses to around 1,000 of the 2,202 accused.
Terming the trial a “rudderless ship”, a bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi on Wednesday asked the prosecution to come up with a timeframe to complete the trial. “A cricket stadium will be needed to conduct trial in the case where over 2,000 persons have been implicated as accused,” the SC bench said on Wednesday.
Data show that the special court faces an uphill task as the serving of summonses to the accused, who are from different parts of Tamil Nadu, is likely to be completed only by December this year. The next challenge will be to serve the copies of all documents, including the chargesheet filed by the Greater Chennai Police and material evidence, to the accused — a mandatory procedure under Section 207 of the CrPc. Each accused will have to be given 3,270 documents covering approximately one lakh pages and some material objects that include devices containing extensive digital evidence.
The case is being heard by the special court for trial of criminal cases related to MPs and MLAs in Chennai. It has been almost 10 years since the FIR was registered and more than four years since the Chennai Police’s Central Crime Branch (CCB) filed the chargesheet in the case on March 8, 2021.
ED has completed PMLA probe
Among the 2,202 persons implicated in the case are people who allegedly paid bribes to the former minister or his henchmen for getting jobs in the transport department. Parallelly, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has also completed its money laundering investigation based on the CCB case.
There are multiple twists and turns in the ongoing cases. In November 2024, Senthil Balaji moved the Principal Sessions Judge in Chennai seeking from the ED cloned copies of digital devices seized from his residence, based on which forensic reports had been generated. The court ruled in Senthil Balaji’s favour.
The agency in turn filed a plea with the Special MP/MLA court seeking cloned copies of the devices from the Greater Chennai Police, as they were the agency which had seized it. The Chennai police countered ED with a refusal, stating that they did not have direct custody or access to the digital materials and that it had been sent to the forensic department for analysis.