Why is that the wheels of prosecution grind very slowly in the case of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers accused of corruption, puzzled Justice N. Anand Venkatesh of the Madras Excessive Court docket on Monday (November 10, 2025) whereas coping with a ₹98.25-crore company contract corruption case involving former AIADMK Minister S.P. Velumani and a few others.

Bewildered over the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) not having obtained sanction to prosecute IAS officers Okay.S. Kandasamy and Okay. Vijaya Karthikeyan thus far, regardless of finishing the investigation within the corruption case in January 2024 itself, the choose insisted that the prosecuting company should essentially clarify the delay to the court docket.

He agreed with advocate V. Suresh, representing anti-corruption organisation Arappor Iyakkam which had lodged the criticism in opposition to Mr. Velumani and others in 2021, that the Tamil Nadu authorities needn’t have spent almost ₹30 lakh to translate round 12,000 pages of paperwork now if the DVAC had obtained the sanction in opposition to the 2 IAS officers earlier than October 2024.

The choose identified that the necessity to submit translated copies was made obligatory by the Centre solely from October 2024. Therefore, the DVAC was responsibility certain to record out the explanations for not having obtained the sanction in opposition to the 2 IAS officers between January and October 2024, particularly when the sanction to prosecute Mr. Velumani was obtained from the Legislative Meeting Speaker on February 12, 2024, he stated.

Lamenting that most of the time, the investigating businesses needed to be prodded by the courts to take each different motion in corruption instances proper from the stage of registration of First Data Report, the choose stated, within the current case, the DVAC had submitted a request to the Centre to grant sanction to prosecute the 2 IAS officers solely after Arappor Iyakkam’s Jayaram Venkatesan filed the current contempt of court docket plea.

The request was submitted on August 30, 2025, however obtained returned for need of translated copies of the vernacular paperwork submitted in assist of the request. Thereafter, on the idea of a sequence of interim orders handed within the contempt plea, the DVAC had translated the voluminous paperwork by spending big quantity of public cash and re-submitted the request to the Centre on November 7, 2025.

When the choose wished to know what the outer restrict for grant of sanction by the Centre was, Addiitonal Public Prosecutor E. Raj Thilak stated, it was three months. The APP additionally agreed to acquire directions from the all investigating officers who had dealt with the case since January 2024 and discover out the explanations for the delay in acquiring sanction in opposition to the 2 IAS officers.

“The State reveals pace in doing each factor else. The identical pace needs to be proven in the case of taking motion in opposition to corruption too. In any other case, folks will lose religion. In truth, motion in opposition to corruption ought to get the primary precedence. Every thing else can wait. Contrarily, what we see is that the motion in opposition to corruption will get the final precedence,” Justice Venkatesh rued earlier than adjourning the contempt plea.