ED denies alleged human rights violations at TASMAC headquarters during search operation

Image used for representation purposes | Photo credit: ANI

The Control Directorate (ED) on Thursday (April 17, 2025) firmly denied the accusation made by the Government of Tamil Nadu and the Marketing Corporation of the State of Tamil Nadu (Tasmac) that Tasmac’s officials were submitted to human rights violations during the search and seizure operation of the emergency service carried out in its headquarters in Chennai on March 6, 2025.

Appearing before a division bank of Judges SM Subramaniam and K. Rajasar, the additional general solution SV Raju, assisted by Ed Special N. Ramesh’s special prosecutor, read the content of the registered duration of Panchanamas The Sarch. He highlighted the portions in which it was recorded that Tasmac’s officials had adequate break, and that women’s employees were allowed to go home.

He said that the Panchanamas had signed the leg by Tasmac officials who had not raised any complaint of the violation of human rights until the presentation of this lot of three writing requests, one by the state government and two signs and Toine The Searcare The Searchare ‘Haring’ to the officials under the indirect of the investigation.

Mr. Raju said that complaints about human rights violations seem to have appeared only at the request of some lawyers to maintain current writing requests. When stating that the managing director of Tasmac S. Visakan was an officer of the Administrative Service of India (IAS), said the ASG, no IAS officer would have remained silent if the officials of the harassment or exercised some kind of force.

The law officer said that the entire search and seizure operation was carried out peacefully and that the data of mobile phones, as well as the email accounts of the tasmac officials, were copied on hard drives, after registering their hash values. “It was not as if the data were tasks clandestinely,” he said.

For his part, the general lawyer PS Raman said that section 17 of the Law on Money Laundering (PMLA) or 2002 requires that certain previous requirements be followed before performing a search. It requires that ED officials register in writing the ‘reasons to believe’ that the person to look for had committed an act of money laundering or was in possession of crimes processed, etc.

Section 17 (2) of the law requires that Emergency Service officials send the ‘reasons to believe’ registered in writing to the awarding authority under PMLA “immediately” after the search. “However, in the present case, the ‘reasons to believe’ have been sent to the authority judged only on March 15, 2025, approximately six days after the conclusion of the search operation,” said the AG, and wondered if there were valid reasons to carry out the SARCH.

To satisfy the subject, the judges read the ‘reasons to believe’ that they presented the emergency department in a sealed coverage and returned the document to Mr. Ramesh after reading it in an open court. He thought that Mr. Raju said the judges could retain the document with them until the delivery of a trial on this lot of written requests, the judges refused to do so since the content of the document was confidential.

After an elaborated hearing, the judges directed the registration of the Superior Court to list the matter again on Monday (April 21, 2025) for the brief response of the main lawyer Vikas Singh by Tasmac and said that the sentence would be reserved after collecting their arguments.