Madras High Court stays ED’s attachment of director Shankar’s properties

The Madras High Court on Tuesday (March 11, 2025) stayed the operation of an order passed by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) on February 17, 2025, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

The Madras High Court on Tuesday (March 11, 2025) stayed the operation of an order passed by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) on February 17, 2025, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) of 2002 for provisionally attaching three of film director S. Shankar’s properties, approximately valued at ₹10.11 crore.

A Division Bench of Justices M.S. Ramesh and N. Senthilkumar granted the interim stay after agreeing with senior counsel P.S. Raman that the ED officials ought not to have attached the properties when a related civil suit had been dismissed and the criminal proceedings had been stayed by the High Court.

The judges also ordered notice, returnably by April 21, 2025, to the ED on a writ petition filed by Mr. Shankar to quash the provisional attachment order and issue a consequential direction to the agency to refrain from initiaing all further proceedings pursuant to the issuance of the provisional attachment order.

The Division Bench took note that the ED had registered an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) against the film director on the basis of criminal as well as civil proceedings initiated by writer Aarur Tamilnadan, who had accused Mr. Shankar of haivng stolen his storyline for Rajinikanth-starrer Enthiran.

The judges pointed out that the writer had initially filed a private complaint against the director before a metropolitan magistrate in Egmore for offences under Section 63 of the Copyright Act and Section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

However, Mr. Shankar had already approached the Madras High Court, under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, with a plea to quash the private complaint. A single judge of the High Court had entertained the quash petition and stayed all further proceedings before the Magistrate.

While granting the stay, the single judge had taken note that a civil suit filed by Mr. Tamilnadan, with similar allegations of his story titled Jaguba having been copied by Mr. Shankar to make Enthiran, had been dismissed by the civil court, Mr. Raman highlighted to the court.