4 months ago
64
CHENNAI
The Madras High Court on Friday held that a 2014 order passed by a Special Court for Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA) cases in Villuppuram refusing to attach the properties of Minister K. Ponmudy and his wife P. Visalakshi was wrong. However, it refrained from interfering with the refusal since the couple had been acquitted by the special court from a disproportionate assets case in 2016.
Justice G. Jayachandran said he had reversed the 2016 acquittal and convicted the couple only on December 19, 2023 and hence the State would have to take a fresh action for attachment of the properties. The observations were made while dismissing an appeal preferred by the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti Corruption (DVAC) in 2016 challenging the special court’s June 24, 2014 order.
The judge pointed out that after the registration of the disproportionate assets case against the couple in 2011 for the charge of having amassed wealth to the tune of ₹1.7 crore between 2006 and 2010, the Government had passed orders in 2013 for interim attachment of their properties. Thereafter, the matter was placed before the special court for making the interim attachment absolute until the completion of criminal proceedings.
However, the couple contended before the special court that it lacks jurisdiction to make the interim attachment absolute since the Criminal Law Amendment Ordinance, 1944 empowers only a District Court to do so. It was also argued that the special court would get the power to make the attachment absolute only after the commencement of trial in the disproportionate assets case and not before that.
The special court accepted the submissions in 2014 and refused to make the inteirm attachment absolute. Disagreeing with such a view taken by the court, Justice G. Jayachandran said, Section 5(6) of the Prevention of Corruption Act empowers the special court to exercise all the powers of a District Judge conferred under Criminal Law Amendment Ordinance and hence the refusal was “absurd.”
Nevertheless, since the couple had got acquitted from the disproportionate assets case on April 18, 2016 and got clear of the stigma until December 19, 2023 when the acquittal was reversed, the earlier attachment proceedings could not be given a new lease of life now but the prosecution could initiate fresh proceedings in accordance with law, the judge observed.
The judge also pointed out that while allowing a separate appeal filed by the DVAC in 2017 against the 2016 accquittal, he had found the couple guilty of having amassed ₹1.72 crore disproportionate to their known sources of income and imposed a fine of ₹1 crore on them.
