Tamil Nadu IAS officer U Sagayam, who has been appointed by the court to inspect various types of mining activities in the state, has sought police protection from the Madras High Court alleging that he has received death threats from unidentified people.
Sagayam also suggested that an investigation should be conducted into the death of an aero-modelling expert, S Parthasarathy in April 2015, who was helping the committee. The petition regarding police protection and probe into the death of Parthasarathy will be heard on September 14, 2017.
Meanwhile, the Madras High Court on Wednesday extended the tenure of U Sagayam as a legal commissioner on the illegal mining probe till the end of this month, that is, August 21, 2017.
On September 11, 2014, the Madras High Court had passed an interim order appointing Sagayam as legal commissioner on a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by social activist Traffic Ramaswamy, in which, he claimed that the state was incurring a huge loss due to irregularities in the allotment of mining lease and illegal mining of granite in Tamil Nadu, reported The Times of India.
On Tuesday, the first bench, comprising Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M Sundar, accepted a request from Advocate M Radhakrishnan on behalf of Sagayam for granting more time to prepare reports and file it before the Registrar General of Madras High Court as per the orders of the High Court.
Last month, the High Court had asked the IAS officer to inspect various types of mining activities in the state and submit related documents to the Registrar of the Madras High Court.
In 2016, Sagayam had submitted a 600-page report along with supporting documents to the Madras High Court on illegal sand mining.