SRM Group offers to deposit Rs 69 cr in court

Chennai, Aug 30 (PTI) Four days after the arrest of T RPachamuthu, the founder chairman of SRM Group of educationalinstitutions, in connection with an alleged scandal in medicaladmissions involving crores of rupees, his son today filed anaffidavit in the Madras High Court offering to deposit Rs 69crore. The chancellor of the SRM University headquartered nearhere, was arrested on August 26 in connection with more than100 complaints from parents relating to "transactions"involving payment of money running into several crores forgetting admissions to medical courses in SRM institutions. The parents had alleged they were duped after beingpromised medical seats in colleges run by SRM Group, and acase was filed by the police. Film producer Madhan, who purportedly acted as an agentand collected huge sums of money from the parents, is the keyaccused in the case and has been missing since May. On June 6, his mother filed a habeas corpus petition inthe high court after she suspected foul play in her son’sdisappearance. A division bench of Justice S Nagamuthu and JusticeV Bharathidasan had on June 9 entrusted the probe on tracingMadhan as well as complaints made against him by students onpayments made for getting admissions to the Central CrimeBranch’s Additional Deputy Commissioner S Radhakrishnan. When the matter came up today before the bench, anaffidavit was filed by Pachamuthu’s son, offering to depositin a magistrate’s court Rs 69 crore, alleged to be the totalamount of payments made by students for gaining admission. The counsel for Pachamuthu said the lower court would behearing his bail plea. The counsel for students and parents, who allegedly madethe payments for getting admission, said instead of depositingthe money in the subordinate court, the amount may be directlypaid to them. To this, the bench said, "We cannot express any view asthe matter is now under investigation. It is to be ascertainedas to whether any money was paid, to whom it was paid andfinally to whom it had gone. We leave it open for theinvestigating officer to do a thorough investigation." It then posted the matter for further hearing to September15. PTI CORR BNSC