The ED has filed a writ petition seeking a direction to the Tamil Nadu Director General of Police/Superintendent of Police. File
The Tamil Nadu Police and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) were locked in a spat before the Madras High Court on Friday (Oct 31, 2025) over the issue of registration of First Information Reports (FIRs) based on information shared by the ED with the jurisdictional police.
Appearing before the first bench of Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava and Justice G Arul Murugan, Advocate General PS Raman and Special Public Prosecutor N Ramesh had a heated argument before the court adjourned the matter for three weeks for filing counter affidavit.
The ED has filed a writ petition seeking a direction to the Tamil Nadu Director General of Police/Superintendent of Police to register an FIR based on the information he shared on June 13, 2024, in respect of a large-scale river sand mining scam worth crores of rupees across the state.
Mr. Ramesh told the court that the information was shared with the state police in accordance with Section 66(2) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, which requires the ED to share information in its possession with other concerned authorities for necessary action.
Section 66(2) was introduced into the 2002 Act through an amendment in 2018 and the Supreme Court in the famous Vijay Madanlal Choudhary case (related to PMLA) in 2022 observed that the police would be “compulsory” to register an FIR based on the sharing of information by the ED, SPP said.
Against the AG’s submissions, she said that the Supreme Court has also held that if the police refuses to register an FIR for any reason, the aggrieved party can only file a private complaint before the Magistrate concerned and not a writ petition before the High Court.
“My learned friend (Mr. Ramesh) is wrong when he says that we have to register an FIR just because they (ED) share information with us… And just because they have sent the information does not mean that I should immediately register it as a post. I will only take a call whether to register an FIR or not,” the AG said.
When the SPP said, “It was not an ego thing but a huge scam,” the AG replied, “My learned friend says it is a big scam and so on. Scams are happening all over India, but the eyes of the Enforcement Directorate are only on Tamil Nadu, nowhere else.”
Despite the Tamil Nadu government collating statistics, the AG said, “About four or five times more sand mining cases are pending in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Bihar. Has the ED taken action against any of them? There are other things at play.”
On the SPP’s contention that information collected by the ED should not go to waste, especially when it comes to matters of public interest, the AG said, “As the state’s advocate general representing my government, we are very concerned whenever the ED pokes its nose into our business.”
Mr. Raman informed the court that on July 16, 2024, Division Bench Justices MS Ramesh and Sunder Mohan had barred the ED from proceeding against certain persons against whom it had registered an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) related to the alleged sand mining scam.
Although this order was filed on appeal, the Supreme Court on 23 September 2025 dismissed the ED’s special leave application. He also said that the ED had summoned many district collectors in the state for investigation of the same ECIR, which was booked on the allegation of sand mining scam.
“If I register an FIR now, the next thing they will do is arrest the collector in Tamil Nadu,” the AG said, pointing out that the ED had recently withdrawn a similar writ petition filed in the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the Delhi government to register an FIR based on information sharing.
Published – 31 Oct 2025 19:42 IST
