TTV Dinakaran custody extended till May 29 in Election Commission bribery case

Meanwhile, the court extended the judicial custody of Dinakaran, his close aide Mallikarjuna and alleged hawala operator Nathu Singh, who were produced from jail through video conferencing, till May 29. 

The response of Dinakaran, who is in judicial custody, came on the Delhi police’s plea seeking his consent for taking the voice samples. Dinakaran’s counsel told special judge Poonam Chaudhry that he should be given a copy of the CD which the police claimed had the audio recordings of telephone conversations between him and arrested alleged middleman Sukesh Chandrashekar and others. 

The advocate said he would decide whether to give the consent for voice samples or not. Chandrashekar has refused to give consent for the voice samples citing several Supreme Court and high court judgements that he has a right to deny. 

The court listed the police’s plea seeking voice samples of Dinakaran and Chandrashekar for arguments on May 18. The court would also hear Mallikarjuna’s bail plea on that day. Crime Branch of the Delhi police has submitted before the court that they needed the voice samples for their probe into the Rs 50 crore graft case. Police said they had a CD containing the audio recordings of the phone conversations between Dinakaran and Chandrashekar and others and they wanted to compare the audios with the voice samples. 

Dinakaran was arrested here on the night of April 25 after four days of questioning for allegedly attempting to bribe an unidentified EC official to get the undivided AIADMK’s ‘Two Leaves’ symbol. His faction had hoped to obtain the symbol for a by- election to the R K Nagar Assembly constituency in Tamil Nadu, which was later rescinded by the Election Commission (EC) after the alleged scam broke out in the media. 

The EC had frozen the AIADMK’s symbol after two factions of the party - one led by Dinakaran’s aunt Sasikala and the other by former Chief Minister O Panneerselvam - staked a claim to it. 

Dinakaran has been accused of allegedly arranging the amount from undisclosed sources and getting it transferred from Chennai to Delhi through illegal channels. Mallikarjuna was arrested for allegedly facilitating the Rs 50-crore deal between Dinakaran and Chandrashekar, who was arrested on April 16. 

Singh was held on the night of April 27 with the police claiming that he was given Rs 1 crore to be handed over to Chandrashekar. The money was meant to be paid as a bribe to someone in the EC, the police has claimed.