Veeramani POCSO Act case: Let SIT work in peace, says Madras High Court judge while hearing DMK’s plea

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Observing that a Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing a child sexual abuse case involving R. Veeramani of Gem Granites must be allowed to work in peace, the Madras High Court on Wednesday (September 30, 2026) simply adjourned by four weeks a petition filed by DMK to inquire Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay and Ministers Aadhav Arjuna and C.T.R. Nirmal Kumar too in connection with the case.

Justice V. Lakshminarayanan took the decision after Advocate General Vijay Narayan said, the political party had filed a defamation suit against the two Ministers for having reportedly accused it of shielding the accused during its regime and also moved the present petition. He said, Justice K. Govindarajan Thilakavadi had reserved orders on DMK’s application seeking the leave of the court to file the defamation suit.

When the judge said, a sensitive issue such as child sexual abuse should not be politicised, senior counsel J. Ravindran replied that it was exactly the stand of DMK too. He said, the political party was also highly interested in getting the perpetrators of the crime punished and delivering justice to the child victims. However, it was being falsely accused of having shielded the offenders, he complained.

In its present petition, the DMK had insisted upon the SIT to act upon its September 27, 2026 representation to summon the Chief Minister and the two Ministers for inquiry and find out if they had any material in their possession to prove the charges levelled against it. In the defamation suit, it had sought damages of ₹1 crore from the two Ministers for having levelled false accusations against it.

The suit was filed along with an application seeking the leave of the court to institute it in Chennai though multinational corporations  X Corp, Meta Platforms, and YouTube were located outside its territorial jurisdiction. In the suit, the party had sought a direction to the social media giants to take down the false and defamatory posts and hence they too had been included as defendants.

Opposing the application to grant leave, the two Ministers told the court that DMK had failed to issue prior notices to them as required under Section 80(1) of the Code of Civil Procedure (CPC) despite having made them as defendants in their official capacity as Ministers and hence the suit itself was not maintainable in law.

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