Chennai: Tamil Nadu Minister for Higher Education K. Ponmudy and his wife were sentenced to three years of imprisonment and slapped a fine of Rs 50 lakh each by the Madras High Court Thursday in a Rs 1.75-crore disproportionate asset case.
Justice G. Jayachandran further suspended the sentence for 30 days to allow Ponmudy, 73, to appeal in the Supreme Court.
In a related development, Tamil Nadu Governor R. N. Ravi approved Chief Minister M. K. Stalin’s recommendation to allot the portfolio of higher education to Backward Classes Welfare Minister R.S. Rajakannappan.
On Tuesday, the Madras High Court had set aside a trial court’s order of 2016 which acquitted the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leader and his wife P. Visalakshi and convicted them in the disproportionate assets case.
In its 2011 final report, the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) noted that the couple in April 2006 had assets worth Rs 2.71 crore and it swelled to Rs 6.27 crore at the end of the check period on May 13, 2010. It alleged that Ponmudy, the then Minister for Higher Education and Mines, amassed wealth worth Rs 1.75 crore disproportionately during this check period, a 65.99 percent more than the couple’s known source of income.
Madras High Court sentences Tamil Nadu Higher Education Minister K Ponmudy to 3 years of simple imprisonment in a disproportionate assets case
The court also imposes a fine of Rs 50 lakhs each on Ponmudy and his wife
The court suspended the sentence for 30 days for Ponmudy as… pic.twitter.com/2pTUyUqqw9
— ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2023
The case which was initially heard by a trial court in Villupuram had acquitted the couple in 2016. The following year, the DVAC contested the trial court’s order in the high court.
On Tuesday, Justice Jayachandran observed that the prosecution without doubt proved that the charge of offence punishable under the Prevention of Corruption Act against both accused.
Treating the minister and his wife as two separate entities and the trial court’s judgement was “palpably wrong, manifestly erroneous and demonstrably unsustainable”, the HC said.
“Whether the spouse of a public servant should be treated as a separate entity or as a part and parcel of the public servant would depend upon the facts of each case. In the present case, even if effective business was done by the firms in the names of the spouse, the evidence indicates that she was only a name lender for the operations done by the public servant,” Justice Jayachandran said.
“Just because a person has separate income tax accounts and some business, segregating the accounts and properties of the person who has aided the public servant to hold his ill-gotten property will lead to miscarriage of justice. A miscarriage of justice which may arise from acquittal of the guilty is no less than from the conviction of an innocent.”
Other cases against Ponmudy
In July, Ponmudy and his son and Kallakurichi MP Gautham Sigamani’s properties were raided by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and were questioned with regard to a DVAC case from 2012.
The case pertains to Ponmudy’s stint as the Minister for Mines and Mineral Resources between 2007 and 2011 wherein he was accused of abusing his power and of giving quarry licences in favour of his son, friends and relatives. The ED probe is still underway in the case.
In August, the Madras High court had initiated a suo moto revision of the acquittal of the Minister by the Vellore Principal district court in a disproportionate assets case from 2002. The DVAC had filed the case against the minister, his wife and three others for allegedly amassing disproportionate assets worth Rs 1.4 crore from 1996 and 2001.
This is an updated version of the report
(Edited by Tony Rai)
and what is the punishment to the ruling central govt that siphonned off crores of tax payer rupees as pointed in CAG reports of 2023?