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CHENNAI: Three retired government officials of Tamil Nadu, two of them in their 70s, have been sentenced to four years in jail by the Madras high court for a financial fraud 40 years ago involving unauthorised sale of imported cement through stockists at the cost of legitimate building projects stalled by a shortage of the commodity in 1983.
The convicted trio – N Rajagopalan (71), P Damodharan (76) and S Ramakrishnan (68) – had pleaded for leniency, citing multiple ailments. A fourth accused, Tamil Nadu Cements Corporation Ltd’s former marketing officer Narayana Sankara, died in 2020 when the trial was underway.
Besides handing them a jail term, Justice P Velmurugan fined the three former officials Rs 45,000 each, failure to pay which would invite another six months in prison.
During M G Ramachandran’s stint as CM in the Eighties, Tamil Nadu had battled a severe cement shortage that prompted the state government to import huge quantities of the building material from North and South Korea. It designated the state corporation to distribute the imported cement among legitimate users. The designated officials were supposed to accept applications accompanied by copies of approved building plans, certificates from engineers regarding cement requirements, and permission by the municipality.
A Vairavanathan, a cement stockist, colluded with the officials to prepare bogus building plans, cement adequacy certificates and building permission before applying for cement allotment against a fictitious names and addresses. For every fake application, the stockist paid Rs 500 to the officials, the probe revealed. As word spread, many other stockists in Chennai took this shortcut. In one such case, a stockist from Nanganallur procured up to 10 tonne of cement. investigators found out.
After a preliminary inquiry, the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption filed a case against four officials and five cement stockists. They probed 69 bogus applications to confirm that cement was distributed to fictitious people.
Four years down the line, a chargesheet was filed, with 750 supporting documents, and the trial at Chennai sessions court went on for nearly two decades. In 2008, the trial court, citing discrepancies in the FIR and evidence submitted by the prosecution, acquitted all of them. The vigilance cell filed an appeal in the Madras high court, which last week pronounced all four ex-officials, including deceased Narayana Sankara, guilty. The stockists were acquitted since the prosecution failed to prove their fault beyond reasonable doubt.
The convicted trio – N Rajagopalan (71), P Damodharan (76) and S Ramakrishnan (68) – had pleaded for leniency, citing multiple ailments. A fourth accused, Tamil Nadu Cements Corporation Ltd’s former marketing officer Narayana Sankara, died in 2020 when the trial was underway.
Besides handing them a jail term, Justice P Velmurugan fined the three former officials Rs 45,000 each, failure to pay which would invite another six months in prison.
During M G Ramachandran’s stint as CM in the Eighties, Tamil Nadu had battled a severe cement shortage that prompted the state government to import huge quantities of the building material from North and South Korea. It designated the state corporation to distribute the imported cement among legitimate users. The designated officials were supposed to accept applications accompanied by copies of approved building plans, certificates from engineers regarding cement requirements, and permission by the municipality.
A Vairavanathan, a cement stockist, colluded with the officials to prepare bogus building plans, cement adequacy certificates and building permission before applying for cement allotment against a fictitious names and addresses. For every fake application, the stockist paid Rs 500 to the officials, the probe revealed. As word spread, many other stockists in Chennai took this shortcut. In one such case, a stockist from Nanganallur procured up to 10 tonne of cement. investigators found out.
After a preliminary inquiry, the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption filed a case against four officials and five cement stockists. They probed 69 bogus applications to confirm that cement was distributed to fictitious people.
Four years down the line, a chargesheet was filed, with 750 supporting documents, and the trial at Chennai sessions court went on for nearly two decades. In 2008, the trial court, citing discrepancies in the FIR and evidence submitted by the prosecution, acquitted all of them. The vigilance cell filed an appeal in the Madras high court, which last week pronounced all four ex-officials, including deceased Narayana Sankara, guilty. The stockists were acquitted since the prosecution failed to prove their fault beyond reasonable doubt.
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