Former AIADMK minister Ponnusamy sentenced to three years’ RI

The other four accused, convicted under Section 109 IPC (abetment) and Sections 13 (2) read with 13 (1) (E) of the PCA, were sentenced to undergo RI for one year each and fined Rs 10,000 each. The sixth accused, auditor Jayaraman, was acquitted from the case.

The judge granted time till September 11 to the convicted accused to appeal against his order running to 41 pages. Till time, the order will not be given effect to.

Since the imprisonment exceeded two years, Ponnusamy cannot contest in the elections for six years.

The judge said that the pecuniary resources or property worth about Rs 77.14 lakh was confiscated by the State.

Till the time he became the education minister, Ponnusamy’s financial position was not sound, the judge pointed out in his verdict.

It appeared that he had to borrow money to make both ends meet and he could not repay loans. Execution proceedings had to be initiated against him by creditors for recovery of the loans. Even as the Deputy Speaker and MLA, he was not in a position to discharge the debts. So, the story that he had a lot of income from land properties and other sources could not be accepted, the judge said.

Admittedly, Rs 56.30 lakh, issued by NRIs through gift-cheques, were credited into the bank-accounts of the last four accused. The evidence of two prosecution witnesses disclosed that these NRIs had not known the accused and that they had no means to present the gift-cheques. One Rajasekaran had played a major part in converting the black-money into legal money. However, he was not examined, for reasons best known to the prosecution, the judge said.

There was absolutely no acceptable evidence to prove that the accused had earned lot of income through the money-lending business, from contract work and from the tutorial college run by them, the judge said adding that it was clear that Prabhavathi, Mala, Venkatesan and Rajappa had no independent source of income to acquire pecuniary resources to this extent in their names.

The judge pointed out that only after Ponnusamy became the minister, the other accused had started filing income-tax and wealth-tax returns.

The conduct of the other accused and the circumstances unerringly and clearly indicated that pecuniary resources were acquired only by utilising Ponnusamy’s funds, which could not be accounted.

The prosecution had proved beyond reasonable doubt its case against the accused, the judge said.

As regards auditor Jayaraman, the sixth accused, the judge said that the prosecution had not let in any evidence to prove that he had helped Ponnusamy or Venkatesan in converting the ill-gotten money into legal money. As a professional, he had only given advice that NRI cheques would not attract income-tax and this did not mean that he had abetted Ponnusamy, the judge added.