Officials of the election flying squad seized 270 new voters identity cards from a group of DMK men in Chennai on Tuesday. According to reports, a flying squad team was on vehicle checks duty near Surendhar Nagar in Medavakkam on Tuesday night when they caught them.
A little past midnight, the officials intercepted an Innova car, which had a DMK flag pinned on its bonnet, and carried out the routine check. Inside the car, they found the voter identity cards and questioned the passengers in the vehicle about these cards. They reportedly told the police that these cards belonged to their friends and relatives and that they were going to distribute it to its owners.
However, not convinced by this explanation, the squad confiscated all the cards and handed them over to the Adambakkam police station. An FIR was registered and the police also arrested seven men, including DMK’s ward secretary from the 168th ward, Divakar. The others arrested are Yuvaraj, Ragavan, Ambrose, Ravi, Subramani and Kalaimani.
Flying squads have been deployed across the state to conduct vehicle checks to track the movement of cash, precious metals and other items meant to be distributed to the voters. On Tuesday morning, members from the flying squad had seized around 150 copies of a book on Rafale, which was supposed to be released on Tuesday evening. The seizure was made citing the violation of the Model Code of Conduct. However, the ECI denied issuing orders for any such seizures and the books were eventually returned to the publisher by evening.
As on April 2, the ECI has seized Rs 121.5 crore cash in Tamil Nadu, which was transported without proper documents. The quantity of precious metals seized, including gold and silver, stood at 884 kilograms, which was worth Rs 135.2 crore. The overall value of seizure in Tamil Nadu stood at Rs 263.12 crore.