Tamil Nadu minister K Ponmudy.
Credit: PTI File Photo
Chennai: In a blow to the ruling DMK, the Madras High Court on Tuesday convicted Higher Education Minister K Ponmudy in a disproportionate assets (DA) case after setting aside a 2016 trial court order acquitting them, which will eventually lead to his disqualification as an MLA and cost his cabinet post.
Justice G Jayachandran ruled that the trial court order dated April 18, 2016, acquitting Ponmudy and his wife P Visalatchi was “palpably wrong, manifestly erroneous and demonstrably unsustainable.” He also refused to entertain a plea by Ponmudy’s counsel and Rajya Sabha MP to suspend the sentence so as to enable him to appeal against the order, saying he will look into the matter on December 21 when he will decide on the sentencing and directed the husband-wife duo to be present in the court on the said date.
Legal experts told DH that “disqualification is instant” upon conviction under Prevention of Corruption Act though there was another opinion that order in the case will be “complete” only on Thursday. Ponmudy, a close aide of Chief Minister M K Stalin, is a professor-turned politician and is one of the five deputy general secretaries of the DMK. He is also placed fifth in the pecking order of the Cabinet headed by Stalin.
The order came after the judge allowed the appeal filed by the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-corruption (DVAC) against the trial court order acquitting the husband-wife duo in the case filed against them for amassing assets disproportionate to the known sources of income during Ponmudy’s tenure as Higher Education and Mines Minister between 2006 and 2011.
In his detailed order, Justice Jayachandran held that the assets acquired by Ponmudy and his wife was 65.99 per cent (Rs 1.79 crore) disproportionate to their known sources of income after contending that segregating the income of the two by the trial court is “patently erroneous contrary to the evidence on record.”
“…the overwhelming evidence against the respondents and the unsustainable reasons given by the trial court for acquittal by ignoring those evidence compels this court to declare the judgment of the trial court as palpably wrong, manifestly erroneous and demonstrably unsustainable,” Justice Jayachandran wrote in his 85-page order.
“Hence, this is a fit case for the Appellate Court to interfere and set it aside. As a result, the Criminal Appeal No. 53/2017 is allowed. The trial Court judgment of acquittal is set aside,” the judge said. He found serious faults with the order by special judge T Sundaramoorthy who acquitted them mainly based on their income tax returns.
“Just because a person have 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,” the judge wrote in his order.
The judge also said a miscarriage of justice which may arise from acquittal of the guilty is no less than from the conviction of an innocent. “If the impugned judgment is clearly unreasonable and if relevant and convincing materials have been unjustifiably eliminated in the process, it shall be a reason sufficient for interference,” Justice Jayachandran said.
Ponmudy is already under the scanner of the Enforcement Directorate in connection with a 11-year-old case of illegal red sand quarrying, while his 2023 acquittal in another DA case filed in 2001 is being reviewed suo motu by the Madras High Court.
The order is also an embarrassment to the DMK just months ahead of the Lok Sabha polls and especially when its Minister V Senthil Balaji is in Puzhal prison in a money laundering case investigated by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and two other ministers are under the radar of other Central agencies.