In July 2023, when an envelope containing summons from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) was delivered to brothers Kannaiyan, 72, and Krishnan, 66, Dalit farmers in Tamil Nadu’s Salem district, in a case of alleged money laundering, the two brothers merely had Rs 450 in their bank account, their lawyer Dalit G Pravina said.
What made the ED summons odd, besides the fact that the senior Attur residents owned just 6.5 acres, was that they were engaged in an ongoing dispute over agricultural land with G Gunashekar, a senior leader of the BJP’s Salem East wing. BJP state spokesperson Narayanan Thirupathy said both Gunashekar and the brothers have filed complaints against each other on charges of land grab. Gunashekar was unavailable for comments.
Despite ED now closing the case — following widespread criticism and outrage after the summons resurfaced on social media last week — the brothers’ troubles are far from over.
Speaking to The Indian Express on Thursday evening, Krishnan said he had filed a police complaint against Gunashekar for harassing him in the morning (January 4). “This morning, he and his team abused us, including using casteist slurs. We have been fighting a case against Gunashekar since 2020 over attempted land grab. He and his men did not let us farm our land for three years,” Krishnan said.
He added that his elder brother Kannaiyan and he were forced to survive on a meagre pension of Rs 1,000 per month and the free ration rice all these years.
Their lawyer Pravina added,“The brothers were unable to farm on their own land for years due to threats from BJP leaders. They started ploughing their land for the first time in years today and still, there was resistance from the land mafia.”
The brothers were booked for money laundering based on a 2017 incident despite their acquittal in the same case by a trial court in 2021. The 2017 case pertains to the brothers setting up unauthorised electric fencing around their farm that resulted in the deaths of two Indian bison. ED sources told The Indian Express that the brothers’ 2021 acquittal had been “overlooked”.
BJP’s Thirupathy told The Indian Express, “The party’s Salem leaders say the BJP has no role to play in the entire episode. The ED summons have nothing to do with the land dispute between Gunashekar and the farmers. In fact, both parties have filed multiple cases against each other, including both civil and criminal. The ED case was registered against the brothers in connection with the killing of two bison. The agency had collected details of the farmers from the state forest department and sent them summons.”
Meanwhile, refusing to talk about why a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, had been registered against the elderly farmers, a top ED source in Chennai said, “It was a lapse on our part. The whole issue was blown out of proportion by social media ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Tamil Nadu.”
The envelope with ED summons to the brothers also mentioned their caste as ‘Hindu Pallars’, an inclusion the agency later attributed to “clerical error”.
Recalling their fight with ED, Krishnan said his brother, their lawyer Pravina and he visited the agency’s Chennai office, nearly 250 km away, on July 5, 2023.
Krishnan said, “ED officials gave us two bundles of forms, some 20 pages each. Since we are illiterate, Pravina helped us fill them. Then, she was asked to leave so they could interrogate us. This, despite us having already submitted our land records. When she told them that PMLA permits a lawyer to stay present during questioning, they got angry. They denied the existence of such a law and even tried to send her away. We told ED officials that we would leave if she was not allowed to remain present during our interrogation.”
Not allowed inside, Pravina said she called the nearby Nungambakkam police station for help.
“Citing rules, the police team requested that I should be allowed inside. When ED officials refused, my clients decided not to cooperate with them. Before we left the ED office, an official shouted at us for calling the police to the ED office. They said they would send summons again, even if I called Chief Minister M K Stalin. I recorded a video of them saying that and went to the DGP’s office, where I filed a case seeking action against them,” said Pravina.
Claiming that she did not get justice from the state police either, the lawyer alleged, “They refused to register an FIR on my complaint owing to pressure from Delhi. They interrogated me for several hours on December 31 and then asked me to rewrite my complaint, but I refused to do so.”
To a query on Pravina’s allegations, A senior police officer said, “We asked her to file a proper complaint since she had given us a compilation of multiple incidents, both related and unrelated. Technically, it was impossible for us to file an FIR.”
Pravina alleged, “The brothers were forced to mortgage their land to borrow Rs 50,000 to appear before the ED and other proceedings. And now, these elderly men will have to pay it back despite the PMLA case being a baseless one.”
Meanwhile, her husband B Balamurugan, a Deputy Commissioner-rank officer with Chennai (North)’s GST and Central Excise department, wrote to President Droupadi Murmu in connection with the case a few days ago. In his letter, he has sought the dismissal of Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for “converting the ED into an extended arm of the BJP”. Balamurugan has in the past accused his colleagues of “imposing” Hindi on him.
How student movements shaped Indian politicsPremium Story
A perfect drive? Only in your dreamsPremium Story
Down the Mekong into Khmer PastPremium Story
Personhood status for animals?Premium Story
Capturing the changing nature of Bengal through photographsPremium Story
A family road trip across Uttar PradeshPremium Story
Expert Explains: How the Northeast was ‘invented’, 52 years agoPremium Story
India's dark chocolate market: Who is taking the biggest bite?Premium Story
Reinventing Crawford: Inside one of Mumbai's oldest marketsPremium Story
Arun Janardhanan… read more
