Chennai: A senior office-bearer of the BJP's Tamil Nadu unit has approached the Madras High Court to quash a case registered by the CB-CID in connection with the seizure of Rs 3.99 crore allegedly meant for distribution to voters at the Tirunelveli Parliamentary Constituency where party MLA Naignar Nagendran is the candidate.
Justice C Saravanan, before whom the petition filed by the BJP's state Organising Secretary Kesava Vinayagam came up for hearing on Friday ordered issuing notice to the CB-CID and posted to June 3, further hearing of the case. In his petition, Kesava Vinayagam submitted thatan election flying squad had on April 6 conducted search in Nellai Express at Tambaram railway station and found two persons, employed in hotels belonging to Nagendran and another man, in possession of huge amount of cash.
The team seized Rs 3.99 crore and handed it over to the Tahsildar and a case was registered by the Tambaram police. The trio was arrested and subsequently released on bail, he added. He said while so, the CB-CID police re-registered a case and recorded the statements of the three men. Based on their statements, police recorded the statements of a few others. On May 20, the petitioner and two others were served with summons to appear before the police the next day. The petitioner expressed his inability to do so as he was in-charge of the Parliamentary elections in Tamil Nadu and also an overseer in other states, he added.
He submitted he was innocent and had nothing to do with the seizure of money and also with the arrested persons. After the polling on April 19 in Tamil Nadu, he was assigned to other states.
Now, CB-CID has issued summons to him. Though he was duty bound to appear and to explain that he has nothing to do with the above issue, the petitioner was forced to file this petition only for two reasons--namely the entire investigation was void-ab-initio (not valid from the beginning), liable to be stalled and the summons was issued only to degrade him and his position in the party due to political vendetta.
There was no basis for summoning him and further there was no mention in the summons issued on whose statement he was called for enquiry, he added.
