Chennai: The Madras High Court has dismissed a writ petition filed by Kingston Engineering College owned by DMK leader and Parliament member Kathir Anand, challenging the sealing of its server room by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
The server room was sealed on January 4 as part of a money laundering case registered against the MP. Kathir Anand is the son of Tamil Nadu Water Resources Development Minister S. Duraimurugan, who is the second-in-command in the Stalin cabinet after the Chief Minister.
A Division Bench comprising Justices S.M. Subramaniam and M. Jothiraman rejected the plea after ED Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) N. Ramesh informed the court that the server room had already been de-sealed on January 7. He added that the ED had seized only two out of the nine servers during its investigation.
The SPP claimed the server room was sealed due to non-cooperation from the college management, which allegedly delayed access to the data.
According to Ramesh, ED officials were made to wait for over six hours on January 4 despite repeated requests to Kathir Anand and other college staff to unlock the server room.
He said a carpenter had to be brought in to forcibly open the locks of the server room and the chairman’s office. During the search operation, the ED reportedly seized Rs 2.74 crore in cash from the college premises.
The college management, however, stated in its affidavit that the cash was meant for employee salaries and Pongal bonuses, claiming that it was sourced from student fees. The management also alleged that documents related to the college, bank transactions, and a hard disk were taken by the ED.
The ED’s searches are part of an ongoing probe into a 2019 Income Tax case against Kathir Anand involving cash-for-vote allegations during the Lok Sabha elections. Over Rs 10 crore in cash was seized from premises allegedly linked to Anand’s associate in Vellore during raids that year, which led to the cancellation of the election in the Vellore constituency.
The college management denied the ED’s claim of non-cooperation and requested the court to direct the agency to provide a copy of the data retrieved from the seized servers. However, the judges declined to issue such a direction, stating it was beyond the scope of the writ petition. The Bench clarified that the college could pursue remedies through other legal avenues.
In an affidavit, Kingston Engineering College principal U.V. Arivazhagu stated that ED officials had conducted a search and seizure operation on the campus from January 3 to January 5 under an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) filed against Kathir Anand under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) of 2002.
The principal asserted that the college staff fully cooperated with the ED during the operation. He claimed that after completing the search, the ED officials shut down the servers and sealed the server room, which disrupted access to computer laboratories and CCTV cameras.
“The safety and security of students, particularly women, are in jeopardy due to this action,” the principal said, urging the court to direct the ED to de-seal the server room. The court dismissed the petition, reiterating that the college could seek legal remedies through other appropriate forums.
(IANS)
