Jaffar Sait moves Madras High Court to quash ECIR booked by ED in money laundering case

Retired DGP M.S. Jaffar Sait seeks to quash ED's ECIR based on a previous corruption case, citing lack of evidence.

Retired Director General of Police (DGP) M.S. Jaffar Sait has approached the Madras High Court with a plea to quash an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) registered against him by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) of 2002.

The quash petition is expected to be listed before a Division Bench of Justices M.S. Ramesh and Sunder Mohan this week.

Explaining the facts of the case, the petitioner said that he was a 1986 batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer who retired from service in December 2020.

When he served as Additional Director General of Police (Intelligence) and also Inspector General of Police (Intelligence) between 2007 and 2011, ‘Savukku’ Shankar alias A. Shankar, now a popular YouTuber, was serving as an employee in the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC).

In 2008, certain sensitive electronic data was stolen from the official computer of the DVAC and leaked to the media. Claiming that he identified Shankar as the culprit in the data theft case, the petitioner said that the YouTuber began harbouring enmity against him since then.

After the change of government in the State in 2011, a complaint was made to the then Government accusing the petitioner of having gotten irregular allotment of Tamil Nadu Housing Board plots at Tiruvanmiyur in 2009. Subsequently, the DVAC registered a corruption case against the petitioner, his wife and others.

Stating that the corruption case was registered at the instance of the YouTuber who “was the most controversial individual indulging in spreading canards even against judicial officers,” the petitioner said, the High Court had quashed the corruption case against him on May 23, 2019.