Minister K N Nehru In Trouble

Chennai: State Minister for Municipal Administration K N Nehru is in deep trouble as the Madras High Court on Friday directed the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) to “immediately register a criminal case” against him in the alleged Rs 630 crore cash-for-jobs case.

A bench comprising Chief Justice M M Shrivastava and Justice G Arul Murugan that was hearing the writ petitions of AIADMK MP I S Inbadurai and one K Athinarayanan’s seeking a case and a probe against Nehru said that it was passing the order on Inbadurai’s plea since it had realised that Athinarayanan had “criminal antecedents.”

Citing the Enforcement Directorate (ED)’s material before it, the bench said that it revealed the commission of a cognisable offence and rejected the State’s stand that the DVAC could wait for the outcome of a detailed inquiry before registering a First Information Report (FIR).

“When corruption is stated to have happened involving several hundred crores of rupees, we find that the material is sufficient enough, disclosing the commission of a cognisable offence for the purposes of registering a case,” the court said.

The ED had shared “voluminous details” under Section 66(2) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act on October 27, 2025, it said and added the state should have acted on that information without hesitation.

Even the preliminary inquiry under Section 173 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita should have concluded within 14 days but the State government had failed to meet the deadline, the court said.

“The state is only finding ways and means to delay registering a case,” and the present case was not one involving a “bare complaint” made to the DVAC, the court said, referring to ED’s “detailed information accompanied by evidence running into hundreds of pages.”

The state should have registered a case based on the ED’s information and concluded a detailed investigation to unravel the truth and bring the culprits to book, the court said. Prima facie an “independent specialised agency should ideally conduct the probe but the State was choosing not to transfer the matter since it had entrusted the issue to the DVAC, the court said.

In earlier hearings, senior counsel NR Elango, who appeared for the DVAC, had said that the agency treated ED’s communication as first information and commenced a “detailed inquiry”. Elango had said the DVAC would write to the ED seeking additional material and that the DVAC could not register a case until it completed the inquiry.