The Madras High Court, on Wednesday, June 15, passed an order allowing Electricity Minister V Senthil Balaji to be shifted to Kauvery hospital in Chennai. He is currently admitted in the Omandurar Government Multi Super Specialty Hospital, where doctors said that the minister who is under judicial custody needs immediate medical attention. The court decided this while hearing a habeas corpus petition filed by the minister’s family after he was arrested on June 14 by officials of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in relation to a money-laundering case. A bench of Justices Nisha Banu and D Bharatha Chakravarthy said that the minister will have to bear the costs of the shifting.
Senthil Balaji was admitted to the hospital with complaints of chest pain and the hospital has said, in a statement, that the Minister requires a coronary artery bypass graft (CABG), a heart bypass surgery. The court has also said that a team of doctors constituted by the ED can regularly visit Senthil Balaji at Kauvery hospitals to take note of the treatment. The court had also said that the hospitalisation period of the Minister will be excluded while considering ED's custody petition.
NR Elango, who appeared for the family of Senthil Balaji submitted before the court that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials had not followed the guidelines before the arrest and that arrest intimation was not given to the family. Stating that though the habeas corpus petition may seem to be infructuous since he's been remanded, it was argued that the arrest was illegal and so the petition is maintainable. The case initially came up for hearing before Justices M Sundar and R Sakthivel, but the latter recused himself from the hearing, and the bench was reconstituted.
The ED had been raiding Senthil Balaji’s premises in Chennai and Karur and in his office at the Secretariat from June 13 and after nearly 18 hours of raids, the ED informed Sentil Balaji he was under arrest. During the wee hours of June 14, he was taken to the hospital with complaints of chest pain. Visuals showed Senthil Balaji lying down in a car, crying in pain as he was brought to the hospital. Senthil Balaji has been arrested in a money-laundering case, pertaining to the transport job scams while he was the Transport Minister between 2011 and 2015, in former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa's cabinet, under All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK)’s rule.