The Madras High Court has agreed to hear on June 6, a petition filed by Indian Police Service (IPS) officer S. Pramod Kumar to quash an extortion case pending against him since 2012, in connection with the ₹870.10 crore Paazee forex scam, that was probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Justice G. Chandrasekharan directed the High Court Registry to list the petition immediately after the summer vacation. The direction was issued after Senior Counsel P.S. Raman told the court that the petitioner was one of the contenders to the post of Director-General of Police (Law and Order).
The counsel said, the incumbent head of police force C. Sylendra Babu was due to retire from service on June 30 and the petitioner, being one of the senior police officers in the State, would be eligible to be considered for the top post if the extortion case pending for over a decade against him, was quashed by the court.
It was brought to the notice of the court that the Tiruppur Central Crime Branch police had registered a case in 2009 against Paazee Forex Trading India Private Limited for having cheated depositors to the tune of several hundred crores of rupees. Then, one of its directors Komalavalli Arumugham went missing. Hence, a separate ‘woman missing’ case was registered in 2009 on the basis of her driver’s complaint. The woman appeared before the police on her own and it was learnt that she went into hiding to escape from the depositors. However, she claimed to have been kidnapped and released on payment of ransom. The woman accused some police officers of having been involved in the crime.
Subsequently, the Madras High Court in 2011 transferred the cheating case registered against the company as well as the case related to the demand for ransom, to the CBI which arrested Mr. Kumar, the then Inspector General of Police (west zone), in 2012. Though he was suspended from service, pursuant to the arrest, and disciplinary proceedings were initiated against him, the officer got them set aside in 2017. In the meantime, a special court for CBI cases in Coimbatore convicted the directors of Paazee Trading in August 2022 and sentenced them to 27 years of imprisonment.
However, the case for ransom was pending till date, even without the framing of charges, the senior counsel complained and contended that the case was liable to be quashed on the simple ground that the CBI had failed to obtain Centre’s prior approval under Section 6A of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946.
Claiming that the petitioner was an officer equal to the rank of Joint Secretary to the Government of India, the counsel said it was necessary to obtain previous approval of the Centre before conducting an inquiry or investigating a case booked against such an officer under the Prevention of Corruption Act of 1988.
Mr. Raman also contended that there was no evidence of any demand or receipt of bribe, and there was no money trail linking the petitioner with the alleged crime. After hearing him at length, the judge ordered the listing of the case in June for the appearance of Additional Solicitor General AR.L. Sundaresan on behalf of the CBI.
