The Madras High Court on Wednesday (July 16, 2025) began the final hearing on a writ petition filed for vacating the Tambaram Police Commissionerate from a rented building located on Semmozhi Salai in Sholinganallur and to hand over the vacant possession of the premises to its owners.

Justice N. Anand Venkatesh heard the arguments advanced by senior counsel V. Raghavachari for the owners of the property, D.H. Sarath Kumar, D. Venkatesh, and D. Choudry, who had filed the writ petition, on Wednesday and decided to hear Advocate General P.S. Raman on Thursday (July 17).

In his submissions, the senior counsel said, the petitioners had rented out their property measuring 27,250 sq. ft. to the police commissionerate from January 2022 only on the basis of an assurance given by its first Commissioner M. Ravi to pay a monthly rent of ₹10.14 lakh.

Accordingly, a lease agreement was signed for three years between the property owners and an Additional Superintendent on behalf of the Commissionerate, agreeing for the monthly rent of ₹10.14 lakh for 11 months and to revise it periodically as per market value.

However, the State government did not pay the rent for several months citing the objections raised by the Finance department and finally, it came out with an offer of a monthly rent of ₹6.33 lakh on the basis of an inspection carried out by a Public Works Department Executive Engineer.

Since the petitioners were not agreeable to the offer made by the government, they insisted on vacating the property and handing over vacant possession but the Police department was continuing to occupy it, citing its strategic location and easy access to the public, the senior counsel said.

Further, stating that the petitioners had rented out only ground plus four floors to the commissionerate, he complained that the Police department had unauthorisedly put up constructions on the terrace too. He said, even the car parking area was not spared and as many as 45 cabins had been created over there.

After turning the open car parking area too into an office, the Police department had put up car sheds on an adjacent piece of land, which had not been rented out to the commissionerate, and begun to park its cars over there. Such unauthorised use of the land had led to blocking the passage to the petitioners’ another property, he said.

“It is the law enforcement machinery which is doing all this. I can’t go and complain to anybody but for this court. The Tambaram Commissionerate was inaugurated by the Chief Minister himself. The owners are in deep distress. They have debts too. They want to sell this property after vacating the tenant,” the senior counsel added.

After relying upon a judgment in support of his plea to direct the government and the police commissionerate to vacate the rented property, Mr. Raghavachari said: ‘”When the British ruled us, we were complaining about lack of rule of law. Now, we are ruling ourselves and still there is no rule of law.”