Holding that a prima facie case of cheating and abuse of office has been made out against former Transport Minister K. Ponmudi of the DMK, the Madras High Court on Wednesday reversed a lower court order discharging him from a criminal case booked on charges of grabbing 3,630 sq.ft. of government land at Srinagar Colony in Saidapet here through forged documents between 1998 and 2001.
Justice P. Velmurugan passed the order while allowing a revision petition filed by a Special Investigation Cell of the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) in 2014. An accused could be discharged from a case only if a prima facie case had not been made out against him, the judge said and set aside an order passed by the third additional sessions court here on April 26, 2007 discharging Mr. Ponmudi from the cheating case.
According to the prosecution, the former Minister had driven away an individual named K. Kannan alias Kannappan who had put up a hut on the government land at Saidapet and then got the land registered in the name of Mr. Ponmudi’s mother-in-law P. Saraswathi. The registration was done by reportedly making another individual impersonate Mr. Kannan and after creating documents to show as if he had sold the land to Ms. Saraswathi.
Since the alleged offence came to light when the DVAC was probing another case booked against Mr. Ponmudi on charges of amassing wealth disproportionate to his known sources of income, the sleuths decided to register a separate case against him as well as nine others including some government officials. A charge sheet was also laid before the jurisdictional lower court on September 2, 2004.
Session court’s stand
While allowing a discharge application, the sessions court had said that the property involved in the cheating case had been listed as one of the properties in the disproportionate assets case too, and therefore, Mr. Ponmudi could not be prosecuted twice.
