The digital evidence is not tampered: ED in Senthilbalaji's bail plea
It was also submitted that his brother and co-accused Ashok Kumar, attacked the IT officials during a raid, said the ASG and submitted that the minister's brother is still absconding.
V Senthilbalaji
CHENNAI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) submitted that it did not tamper with any digital evidence against the jailed DMK leader V Senthilbalaji in the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) case, it is the misconception of the former minister, said the investigation agency before the Madras High Court (MHC).
Additional Solicitor General (ASG) ARL Sundaresan appeared before Justice N Anand Venkatesh, for the ED and submitted that the petitioner (Senthilbalaji) is not satisfied with the provisions of 439 CrPC and section 45 of PMLA.
The petitioner was a minister, till one day before his bail hearing and suddenly resigned his ministership for the sake of bail, said the counsel. Even though he resigned from the cabinet, he is still an influential person, his past conduct establishes that he is capable of tempering the vital witnesses if granted bail, submitted the ASG.
It was also submitted that his brother and co-accused Ashok Kumar, attacked the IT officials during a raid, said the ASG and submitted that the minister's brother is still absconding.
The ASG submitted that under section 45 of PMLA, the test is that the court has to satisfy that the accused is not guilty of the offense. Further, the ASG cited the Supreme Court's judgment in the Vijay Madanlal Choudhary case and submitted that the court has to consider only the genuine case against the accused. Since the grant of bail is the right of the accused it cannot be viewed mechanically, submitted the ASG.
The ASG objected to the main contention of the petitioner that the ED tampered with the digital evidence. The digital evidence was seized only by the Central Crime Branch (CCB) and was lying before the trial court; the ED received the digital evidence from the trial court, said the ASG.
The lateral entries in the pen drive as contended by the petitioner are not factual and submitted that the alleged irregular number of files found in the forensic reports is only the selected number of files for analysis, the pen drive contains thousands of files, the ASG submitted.
Likewise, the alleged interchange of seized hard disks is not also true, those were different hard disks seized from different places, one is from the petitioner's house and the other one is from the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) office, Chennai, ASG contended.
It was found that the co-accused Shanmugam, the personal assistant of the petitioner when he was the transport minister, had sent various e-mails to the MTC on the instruction of the petitioner, ASG said objecting the bail plea of Senthilbalaji. After the submission, the judge posted the matter to February 19 for the petitioner's reply submission.
