Chennai: Madras high court on Wednesday refused to direct the DVAC from taking any coercive action against former minister and DMK MLA E V Velu and his son E V Kumaran in connection with a case registered against them for allegedly causing a loss of Rs 8.22 crore to the Tamil Nadu govt by illegally excavating soil from a lake for a DMK Youth Wing conference in Tiruvannamalai.Justice V Lakshminarayanan instead directed the DVAC to file its response to the plea moved by Velu and his son seeking to quash the case by Nov 6. “The Supreme Court has categorically said that the high courts must refrain from passing such interim orders in quash petitions,” the judge said.On Dec 14, DMK‘s north zone youth wing conference was held in Tiruvannamalai. To level the conference venue, soil was allegedly illegally excavated from the nearby Malappambadi Lake, covering an area of 12 acres and a depth ranging from 10 to 23 feet causing Rs 8 crore loss to the govt.Denying the allegations, advocate Rahul Balaji for the petitioners submitted that the petitioners was neither the applicant for the conference nor its organiser. The conference was organised by a Member of Parliament, and the authorities were aware of this.Contending that the provisions invoked in the complaint itself were questionable, he pointed out that the offences included criminal breach of trust and cheating did not arise from the facts alleged.The counsel further submitted that the conference venue was owned by a private limited company and had been used several times previously for holding large conferences. At least three conferences had allegedly been conducted at the same venue earlier.“The authorities were attempting to connect a permission granted for excavation of a small quantity of silt with the allegation that material had subsequently been removed from the lakebed in large quantities. The FIR itself merely claimed that there was evidence of removal of material from the lakebed, but questioned who had determined that such removal had actually taken place and on what basis,” he said.He further claimed that the FIR was a “complete work of fiction” and maintained that the allegations were unsupported.
