Tamil Nadu police have constituted a four-member Special Investigation Team to investigate the POCSO case against granite businessman R Veeramani and “related matters”.
The SIT, constituted by Director General of Police Mahesh Kumar Aggarwal on September 24, will comprise Additional Commissioner of Police P C Thenmozhi, Joint Commissioner Disha Mittal, Superintendent of Police J Mutharasi and Deputy Commissioner V V Geethanjali. It will work under Chennai Police Commissioner A Amalraj.
The development comes as M P Ranjan Kumar, president of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee’s Scheduled Caste wing, has shared a detailed account of how he claims to have first encountered an objectionable video involving Veeramani. The account refers to a dispute involving Veeramani, his associate Shanthi and her husband Mahendra Simhan before the police formally registered the POCSO case in October 2025.
Kumar said his acquaintance with Shanthi began over an unrelated real-estate discussion in June 2024. Months later, he claimed, she asked him to arrange a meeting with Tamizhaga Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam leader John Pandian over a financial dispute.
Kumar claimed the three subsequently met at a hotel in Nungambakkam, where he witnessed a heated exchange between Shanthi and Pandian involving money and references to a video.
Pandian, however, disputed Kumar’s version of that encounter and said, “Ranjan came to see me after getting an appointment through a political leader. He was the one who brought Shanthi to the hotel.” According to Pandian, the two asked him to help obtain Rs 20 crore from Veeramani.
“I told them, ‘I don’t do this kind of work. This is unnecessary. Go and see him yourselves. I will not interfere’,” Pandian claimed, adding that he neither met nor spoke to them afterwards.
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Kumar denied asking Pandian for money. His account instead places the origins of the video in a dispute within Shanthi’s household. Kumar claimed Shanthi told him that she had not recorded the footage deliberately. He claimed Shanthi told him that her husband had installed a concealed camera because he suspected the nature of her relationship with Veeramani, and the camera instead captured Veeramani allegedly entering with a minor girl.
Police have not publicly established the circumstances in which the recording was made.
Kumar claimed Shanthi and her husband then left him alone in a room and played a clip on a television. “I saw an elderly-looking man removing his clothes, giving a gift box to a girl who appeared to be 15 or 16, and touching her inappropriately,” Kumar claimed. “I immediately recorded the video on my phone.”
He claimed he confronted Shanthi and left, consulted lawyers and decided to approach the police. Kumar said he signed a written complaint on November 21, 2024, and the following day met then Additional Commissioner of Police N Kannan at the Chennai Police Commissionerate, submitting the complaint along with screenshots and seeking action against Veeramani and Shanthi.
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“After 10 or 15 days, AVS Inspector Mahesh contacted me,” Kumar said. “Whenever he asked me for information, I provided it.”
He claimed that in December 2024, at the inspector’s request, he sent the video clip through WhatsApp for further inquiry. But according to Kumar, police repeatedly told him in the following months that an arrest could not be made without identifying a survivor. “From the day I gave the complaint until the end, I clearly told them that I did not know any of the victims,” he said.
Kumar’s claim has assumed greater significance because the POCSO case was formally registered only in October 2025, after a child-rights activist approached police with a pen drive containing a video. Kannan has separately confirmed receiving Kumar’s earlier complaint and said he escalated it to then Chennai Police Commissioner A Arun.
Meanwhile, on Thursday night, the Tamil Nadu government placed senior IPS officers Arun and Kannan on compulsory wait.
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Kumar said he was surprised when the subsequent arrests were reported as arising from the October 2025 pen-drive complaint, with no reference to the information he says he had provided in November 2024.
Pandian, meanwhile, said he knew Veeramani only as a businessman whom he had encountered occasionally and had no knowledge of his personal affairs. He suggested that the controversy surrounding the case had acquired a political dimension, and added that wrongdoing should be investigated regardless of when it occurred.
“If someone has committed a wrong, whether it was two years ago or 10 years ago, a wrong is a wrong,” Pandian said. “But this is being politicised; that much is clear.”
