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Veeramani case, Reporter TV raid and ECI dissent | South Central 94

South Central examines the questions surrounding the Veeramani case in Tamil Nadu, the police raid on the Reporter TV newsroom and the reported dissent within the ECI.

Dhanya Rajendran, Pooja Prasanna

Published:25th Sep, 2026 at 6:31 PM

How did allegations against a powerful mining baron remain buried for years, despite the police being alerted?

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In this week's South Central, hosts Dhanya Rajendran and Pooja Prasanna discuss the allegations surrounding Tamil Nadu mining baron Veeramani, the police investigation into the case, the raid on Reporter TV’s newsroom in Kerala and growing questions over dissent within the Election Commission of India.

To discuss the first topic, the hosts are joined by TNM’s Chennai Bureau chief Shabbir Ahmed to examine how allegations of sexual assault of minors involving Veeramani remained uninvestigated despite a complaint allegedly being made to senior Chennai police officials in November 2024.

Shabir explains how the police later filed a closure report citing a lack of prosecutable evidence, only for a court to reject the report and order a reinvestigation. The discussion looks at the role of politicians, police officials and others who may have known about the allegations, and the questions raised by the police’s handling of the case.

“According to the closure report, the final report that was filed by the CCB in the POCSO court, the police first came to know about this crime in October 2025. But now Ranjan Kumar, Congress leader, he has claimed that in fact, he knew about it in November 2024 and he had approached the top officials of Chennai police,” he says.

The episode then turns to Kerala, where the police raid on Reporter TV’s newsroom has sparked a debate over press freedom and media ownership. Senior journalist MG Radhakrishnan argues that entering the newsroom and taking journalists’ phones was unacceptable, while the discussion also examines Reporter TV’s own record, the political affiliations and conduct of media owners, and the wider problem of corporate ownership and concentration in Indian media.

“The kind of increasing hegemony of the corporate class in media, it actually has changed the entire media discourse in India. The particular corporate groups, which with interests in so many other business sectors telecom, energy, infrastructure, banking and all those getting into media definitely has created a lot of problems in India's media. The first casualty has been objectivity because there is a huge case of conflict of interest,” MG Radhakrishnan adds.

In the final discussion, the hosts examine an Indian Express investigation revealing that two Election Commissioners had recorded dissent over several decisions taken by the Election Commission in the past ten months.

The hosts are joined by independent investigative journalist, Poonam Agarwal.

The conversation also looks at what these disagreements mean for the functioning and transparency of a constitutional body tasked with conducting elections.

“The biggest problem that I have seen, as far as the Election Commission is concerned, initially there had been a blind faith in the Election Commission by the political parties. Then it changed gradually in 2024. We have seen that distrust increased, and the entire database- how it is being manipulated, allegedly by the Election Commission and the vote chori allegations and the discrepancies in the votes polled and counted, all these things,” she says.

Tune in to the full episode here.

Audio timecodes:

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:02:08 - Headlines

00:08:12 - Veeramani POCSO case

00:27:19 - Reporter TV raid

00:47:08 - The Election Commission and internal dissent

1:09:35 - Recommendations

References

TN Cong leader tells TNM he alerted Chennai cop on Veeramani in November 2024

14 times in 10 months, two Election Commissioners objected on record to poll panel steps

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