Supreme Court remands Tamil Nadu minister V Senthil Balaji to 5-day ED custody

The Supreme Court has dismissed the petitions filed by Tamil Nadu minister V Senthil Balaji and his wife S Megala against an order of the Madras High Court that upheld Balaji’s arrest by the Enforcement Directorate in a money laundering case.

A bench of justices AS Bopanna and MM Sundresh granted ED five days of custodial interrogation of Balaji (until August 12). The bench also referred the large issue of permissible police custody beyond the first 15 days of remand to a larger bench. Referring to a leading judgment of SC, which had in 1992 held that there cannot be police custody beyond 15 days from the date of arrest, the bench held that it needs to be reconsidered by a larger bench.

“Allowing the said interpretation, which in our respectful view is contrary to the very mandate” of the Criminal Procedure Code, “would cause serious prejudice to the investigation”, the bench said. It further said that it is “inclined to refer the larger issue… as to whether the 15 days period of custody in favour of the police should be only within the first 15 days of remand or spanning over the entire period of investigation — 60 or 90 days — as the case may be, as a whole”.


The judgment reads “this issue needs to be put to rest as a legal proposition on an authoritative basis pronounced by a larger bench, though it does not alter our consideration herein the facts and circumstances arising in this case”. It might be mentioned here that a similar opinion was voiced in April this year by a bench comprising justice (retired) MR Shah and justice CT Ravikumar in a plea pertaining to a coal scandal.

The Madras HC had also held as valid Balaji’s subsequent remand to judicial custody by a sessions court in the cash-for-jobs case related to the state’s transport department during his tenure as its minister.