Madras High Court. File | Photo credit: K. Picumani
Why the wheels of prosecution turn very slowly when it comes to Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers accused of corruption, Justice N Anand Venkatesh of the Madras High Court wondered on Monday (Nov 10, 2025) while hearing the ₹98.25 crore corporation corruption case involving former AIADMK minister SP. Velumani and several other ministers.
Puzzled that the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) has not yet received sanction to prosecute IAS officers KS Kandasamy and K Vijaya Karthikeyan despite the investigation of the corruption case being completed in January 2024, the judge insisted that the prosecution must explain the delay in court.
He agreed with advocate V Suresh, representing the anti-corruption organization Arappor Iyakkam, which filed the complaint against Mr. Velumani and others in 2021, that the Tamil Nadu government did not have to spend nearly ₹30,000 to translate around 12,000 pages of documents now if the DVAC had obtained sanctions against the two IAS officers before October 2024.
The judge pointed out that the need to submit the translated copies was only made mandatory by the Center from October 2024. Therefore, the DVAC was required to give reasons why it did not obtain sanction against the two IAS officers between January and October 2024, especially when the sanction to prosecute Mr. Velumani was obtained from the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, he said in February122222.
Lamenting that more often than not the investigating agencies had to be prompted by the courts to take all further action in corruption cases at the stage of registration of the First Information Report, the judge said that in this case the DVAC had submitted an application to the Center for sanction to prosecute the two IAS officers only after Arappor Iyakkam filed a suit against Jayaram Venkate.
The application was submitted on 30 August 2025 but was returned due to the lack of translated copies of the national documents submitted in support of the application. Then, on the basis of a series of interim orders passed in the contempt suit, the DVAC translated the voluminous documents by spending a huge amount of public money and resubmitted the application to the Center on November 7, 2025.
When the judge wanted to know what was the outer limit for sanction by the Centre, Additional Public Prosecutor E. Raj Thilak said it was three months. The APP has also agreed to take instructions from all investigating officers who have been dealing with the case since January 2024 and find out the reasons behind the delay in getting sanction against the two IAS officers.
“The state shows speed in all other matters. It should show the same speed in taking anti-corruption measures. Otherwise, people will lose faith. In fact, anti-corruption measures should be given first priority. Everything else can wait. On the contrary, we see that anti-corruption measures are given last priority,” Justice Venkatesh said before adjourning the contempt plea.
Published – 10 Nov 2025 17:40 IST
