Madras High Court seeks ED’s response to writ petitions filed by Tasmac against search operation

ED officials conduct a raid at Tasmac headquarters located in Egmore, Chennai. File
| Photo Credit: ANI

The Madras High Court on Thursday (March 20, 2025) granted time till Monday (March 24, 2025) to the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) to file its counter affidavit to two writ petitions filed by the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (Tasmac) to declare as illegal the search and seizure operations conducted between March 6 and 8, 2025.

A Division Bench of Justices M.S. Ramesh and N. Senthilkumar also orally asked Additional Solicitor General (ASG) A.R.L. Sundaresan, assisted by ED Special Public Prosecutor N. Ramesh, to ensure that no coercive action was taken against Tasmac officials before the court could hear the matter next week.

Advocate General P.S. Raman, representing the State government, and senior counsel Vikram Chaudhary, representing Tasmac, told the Bench that they would also submit CCTV footage to prove how every individual, from the Tasmac MD to the security guard, was harassed for 60 hours.

The A-G told the court that only women employees were allowed to go home just for six hours every night during the search operation at the Tasmac headquarters in Chennai. Mr. Chaudhary said, data from the mobile phones of the MD and other officials was taken in complete violation of their right to privacy.

“This is a classic case in the country where State government officers, including women, have been made to sit for 60 hours from morning till midnight. They were given a break for six hours, and this process continued for three days plus. Nobody can stop a legitimate investigation but [it cannot be done], not in this way,” Mr. Choudhary said.

Mr. Raman complained that the Tasmac officials were not even made aware of the predicate offences based on which ED had embarked on the search and seizure operation. The officials were neither given a copy of the Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) nor the search authorisation issued by a ED Joint Director, he said.

He accused the ED officials of having barged into the Tasmac headquarters on March 6 and examining official records related to transport and bar tenders, besides accessing data from the mobile phones and Gmail accounts of the MD and other top officials.

After observing that the manner in which the ED had exercised its powers was under question in the two writ petitions filed by Tasmac, the judges decided to take a call on the issue after giving an opportunity to the central agency to file its detailed counter affidavits to both the petitions.

In one of the writ petitions, Tasmac had sought a declaration that the search and seizure operation conducted between March 6 and 8 was illegal and in the other, it had sought a direction to the ED not to harass the Tasmac employees in the guise of investigation.

Apart from these two cases, the State government and Tasmac had jointly filed a third writ petition seeking a declaration that the conduct of such searches by the ED, without the consent of the State government, was in violation of the principle of federalism enshrined in the Constitution.

However, when the judges questioned the maintainability of such an omnibus prayer, which could lead to preventing the ED from investigating any matter within the State of Tamil Nadu, the A-G agreed to amend the prayer and urged the court to hear the other two writ petitions filed by Tasmac.