Searches in TASMAC office: Can ED search High Court Registrar General’s office for offence by lower court staff, asks Advocate General P.S. Raman

Enforcement Directorate officials during a search at the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC) headquarters located in Chennai on March 6, 2025.
| Photo Credit: ANI

Advocate General P.S. Raman on Tuesday (April 15, 2025) wondered whether the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) officials can be allowed to conduct a search and seizure operation at the office of the Registrar General of the Madras, High Court, if the local police had registered a case for a predicate offence of corruption against a few lower level staff in the city civil court.

The A-G drew the analogy, before a Division Bench of Justices S.M. Subramaniam and K. Rajasekar, while arguing a writ petition filed by the State government to declare as illegal the search and seizure operation carried out by the ED officials at the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC) headquarters at Egmore in Chennai between March 6 and 8, 2025.

Mr. Raman told the court that the TASMAC officials were absolutely not aware of the basis on which the search and seizure operation was carried out. No material whatsoever was provided to them by the ED officials at the time of search. Neither a copy of the Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) nor that of a search warrant was given to the TASMAC authorities.

He said, only after the filing of the present writ petition in the court, had the ED claimed to have registered the ECIR on the basis of some 42 First Information Reports (FIRs) that the Directorate of Vigiilance and Anti Corruption (DVAC) had booked against TASMAC officials over a period of a few years for various offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.

Asserting that TASMAC would have been either a complainant or a victim of the offence in all the FIRs booked by the DVAC against TASMAC staff for the charge of corruption, the A-G wondered how those FIRs could become a basis for conducting a search and seizure operation at the office of a State-owned corporation without respecting the federal structure of the country.

He also complained of the TASMAC officials having been subjected to grave human rights violations during the search and seizure operations that spanned for about 60 hours. Since those officials were also citizens of the country and were too weak to fight the mighty ED individually, the State was duty bound to protect their interests by way of the present writ petition, he argued.

The A-G challenged the ED to produce a single communication addressed by it either to the State government or TASMAC seeking its assistance in probing the money laundering angle behind the 42 FIRs. He said, the ED had issued summons to various Collectors in the State when it investigated sand mining cases. However, no such procedure was followed in the TASMAC investigation, he added.

On his part, senior counsel Vikas Singh, representing TASMAC, argued that the ED cannot hide the FIRs. Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code may be a scheduled offence under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) of 2002 but if it had been invoked by the local police in a case of honour killing, the PMLA would not come into play. Therefore, TASMAC had a right to know the contents of the FIRs, he said.

When the judges pointed out that the provisions of the PMLA were harsh because they were connected with the economy of the country, Mr. Singh replied: “It is not as if the State police is not supposed to inquire into economic offences. If the ED goes to BJP ruled States too and raids the excise offices over there, then its credibility can be understood but it picks and chooses. That is where the problem lies.”

Earlier in the day, senior counsel Vikram Choudhary too argued for TASMAC. At the end of the day, the judges directed the High Court Registry to list the matter again on Wednesday for continuation of the arguments of Mr. Raman and also for Additional Solicitors General S.V. Raju and AR.L. Sundaresan, assisted by ED Special Public Prosecutor N. Ramesh, to make their counter submissions.

The judges asked Mr. Ramesh to ensure that the 42 FIRs, relied upon by the ED, were submitted in the court for their perusal.