Chennai, January 3 (UITV)- The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday raided five locations of Tamil Nadu’s Vellore MP and DMK leader Kathir Anand in connection with a money laundering case. The raids began in the morning and are still going on. However, ED officials have not given any official statement to the media about the raids.
Kathir Anand, against whom the raids have been conducted, is the son of senior Tamil Nadu ruling party DMK leader and second-in-command minister S. Duraimurugan in the Stalin government. Duraimurugan is the general secretary of the DMK and is considered a close aide of Chief Minister MK Stalin. Kathir Anand is an MP from the Vellore Lok Sabha constituency and represents the region in Parliament.
The DMK party has reacted strongly to the raids, calling it an attempt to target the party. The party alleges that the raids are being conducted for political reasons and are aimed at weakening their party. The raids are being linked to a case registered in 2019.
In fact, in 2019, the Election Commission (ECI) recommended the cancellation of elections on the Vellore Lok Sabha seat. After this, the then President Ram Nath Kovind took action on this and canceled the election of Vellore. The Election Commission had recovered unaccounted cash of Rs 11 crore from Kathir Anand’s house and other places during the election process. Due to this, the election was canceled and the election in Vellore was postponed on 16 April 2019.
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After this, the election was held again on 5 August 2019, in which DMK candidate Kathir Anand defeated AIADMK candidate A.C. Shanmugham by a narrow margin of 8,141 votes. When this matter came into discussion after the action of the Election Commission, the DMK termed it a conspiracy of the opposition parties.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Kathir Anand defeated A.C. Shanmugham again, but this time his victory margin was quite large. He won by 2,15,702 votes, which was an indication of his political influence and his popularity among the masses.
Currently, after this raid, the opposition and DMK have alleged that ED and other investigating agencies are working under political pressure. However, there has been no official statement from ED regarding this action yet. Further action and investigation in this case is being monitored, as this development can bring a turning point in Tamil Nadu politics.
