Chennai, Nov 6 A case has been registered by the DVAC against senior DMK leader Durai Murugan and several others over alleged irregularities in river and sand mining that caused an estimated loss of over Rs 1,427 crore to the state exchequer, officials said on Friday.
Following the registration of the case, vigilance officials carried out searches at 34 locations across Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, seizing 825 incriminating documents, 11 electronic devices, and three bank locker keys.
According to an official release, the case was registered based on complaints from the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Chennai, as well as S Tamilselvan and Jayaram Venkatesan, convener of the anti-corruption NGO Arappor Iyakkam.
Besides Durai Murugan, the first information report names retired Engineers-in-Chief A Muthaiya and Ramamoorthi, 14 serving public servants of the Water Resources Department (WRD), 10 private individuals and firms, and several others.
The complaints alleged widespread corruption and irregularities between 2021 and 2024 in river sand mining operations across 28 quarries in Tamil Nadu.
“Contracts were awarded through limited tenders instead of open tenders, and sand was quarried far beyond the approved mining plan,” the DVAC said, adding that fake vouchers were fabricated and passed off as genuine permit slips to transport sand illegally.
A preliminary probe into just four of the 28 quarries revealed a wrongful revenue loss of Rs 1,427,34,23,059 to the government, the agency said.
The DVAC conducted simultaneous searches across premises in Chennai, Pudukkottai, Tiruchirappalli, Karur, Vellore, Madurai, Dindigul, Sivagangai, Coimbatore, Salem, Namakkal, and neighboring Puducherry.
Further investigation is underway, officials added.
(PTI News)
