Order CBI probe against Murasoli Trust, litigant urges Madras High Court

The Madras High Court on Friday (March 27, 2026) sought the response of Murasoli Trust, associated with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), to a public interest litigation (PIL) petition seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the alleged occupation of 12 grounds of Panchami land (meant for Scheduled Castes) in Chennai and also regarding its other activities.

The First Division Bench of Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice G. Arul Murugan permitted senior counsel P. Wilson to take notice on behalf of the trust and file a detailed response, within two weeks, to the PIL petition preferred by Tiruvenelveli-based advocate Kutty alias K. Venkatachalapathy, 48, through his counsel on record V.R. Shanmuganathan.

During the course of arguments on Friday, Mr. Wilson accused the PIL petitioner of not having disclosed that he was a district secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He also told the court that it was a politically motivated litigation with its genesis having begun when Union Minister L. Murugan of the BJP served as the vice-chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) in 2020.

The judges asked the senior counsel to make all his submissions in writing and ordered notices to the CBI as well as the NCSC. In his affidavit, the petitioner stated that Murasoli Trust had filed a writ petition in the High Court in 2020 to restrain the NCSC from inquiring into a complaint regarding the Panchami land. Justice S.M. Subramaniam of the High Court had dismissed the petition on January 10, 2024.

During the hearing of its 2020 case, the trust had relied upon a document numbered as 4381/1974 to claim that Anjugam Pathipagam had purchased the property from a person named P. Madhavan Nair and that a patta, too, was issued for it in 1985. However, there were inconsistencies in the claim made by the trust and the revenue records maintained by the State government, the PIL petitioner claimed.

Arguing the case for him, senior counsel Dama Seshadri Naidu said, the permanent land register and patta copy issue register had mentioned another document numbered 4383/1974 and the Saidapet Sub-Registrar’s office had confirmed that no document numbered 4381/1974 was ever registered. Therefore, there were serious discrepancies with respect to land ownership, he claimed.

The senior counsel said, the NCSC was only a recommendatory body with no investigative arm to help it in arriving at the truth and hence, it was necessary to order a CBI probe into the issue. In his affidavit, the PIL petitioner had also said, the objectives of Murasoli Trust were not to make profits but the trust was running a newspaper titled Murasoli, which received both public and private advertisements.

Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin was the managing trustee of Murasoli Trust, which had reportedly accumulated reserves and surplus amounting to ₹143.30 crore as on March 31, 2025, the petitioner said and insisted that these issues, too, call for a detailed probe by the CBI.