T. Devanathan Yadav, the BJP candidate from Sivaganga constituency in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls, has been arrested by the Economic Offences Wing (EoW) of the Tamil Nadu police on the charge of cheating 150 depositors of the Mylapore Hindu Permanent Fund Nidhi Limited.
The finance firm had allegedly failed to return the investments and pay interest to its depositors after the maturity period. Yadav has been questioned by the EoW for more than four months now. With several depositors raising complaints, the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee and the Communist Party of India lodged a case against Yadav.
Yadav was picked up from Pudukottai en route to Sivaganga from Trichy. According to police sources, he was travelling to Pudukottai. He will be brought to Chennai by the police and produced before the court. Sources say that Yadav and his company had cheated more than 150 depositors to the tune of Rs 50 crore. The depositors in April and June held protests and also laid siege to the office of the Mylapore Hindu Permanent Fund Nidhi Limited, in Mylapore. Based on the complaints from the depositors, the EoW registered a case against him.
Meanwhile, BJP state chief K. Annamalai posted on X saying that, his party was committed to ensuring justice for the investors who lost their deposits. He also said that the “Tamil Nadu government should conduct a thorough investigation. At the same time, if this is one of the attempts to threaten the NDA partners for pointing out the failure of the Law and Order in the state, I strongly condemn the DMK government.”
Who is Devanathan Yadav?
62-year-old Yadav, contested against Congress’s Karti P. Chidambaram in Sivaganga, during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, on a BJP ticket. A resident of R Nagar in Chennai, Yadav is a businessman and runs a vernacular TV channel. A PhD graduate in Behavioural sciences from a University in the USA, Yadav was the richest candidate from Tamil Nadu during the election. His affidavit stated that he along with his wife Meenakshi Yadav and two daughters has assets worth Rs. 300 crore.
Yadav, with his community back up in Sivaganga, pushed the AIADMK’s candidate A. Xavierdas to the third position. Founder of the Indhiya Makkal Kalvi Munnetra Kazhagam (IMKMK) he is considered close to the state BJP leadership.
A financially powerful leader, Yadav gave a foothold to the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Tamil Nadu. He was the first to get Mayawati and Kanshiram for a public meeting in the state. At one point he came out of the BSP and took a stand with Jayalalithaa’s close aide V.K. Sasikala’s husband M. Natarajan. And then he fell out with Natarajan only to take the caste card and launch a party on his own called the IMKMK.
In the Lok Sabha elections, whenever Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Tamil Nadu to campaign for the BJP candidates Yadav was given space in the dias next to Modi.
The Mylapore chit fund case
Considered to be one of the oldest finance firms in the country, the Mylapore Hindu Permanent Fund Nidhi Ltd was launched in 1872. With over 5,000 depositors, most of them senior citizens from the affluent Brahmin community in Mylapore, the chit fund company was a legacy firm considered to be the most trusted institution, till a year before.
In December 2023, the demand for withdrawals from the chit fund went up as one finance firm in Central Chennai had closed its operations. Panic-stricken depositors queued up in front of the finance firm to withdraw the money. Tamil Nadu Congress Committee, Communist Party of India also filed complaints against Devenathan Yadav for cheating the depositors.
