Tamil Nadu’s Illegal Sand Mining: A Scandal Too Big To Bury

A scam of over Rs 5,800 crore and a state government in the dock — the case has been ordered by a high court to be investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

You would think such important news to be the prime-time discussion topic on television channels and the subject of blazingly headlined reports in print publications.

As it happens, most Tamil news channels mentioned the developments cursorily, and newspapers, while reporting on them, have mostly buried the news in a nondescript corner.

That is the power of the illegal sand mining lobby in Tamil Nadu, whose tentacles have spread deep into the past and present state regimes of the state.

That a case of such magnitude, with the alleged involvement of some of the biggest names in the state's politics, has managed to sustain in the courts, and that some amount of information has seeped into the public domain, is mostly because of some rare breed of honest officials and a few committed journalists.

The illegal sand mining issue has been plaguing the state for the last 25 years. But the case could not make much progress for obvious reasons — the mafia involved in it was all too powerful.

The case survived only after a suo motu public interest litigation was taken up by the court in 2015. On 18 February 2025, the Madras High Court ordered an investigation by the CBI into the large-scale illegal beach sand mining scam in Thoothukudi, Tirunelveli, and Kanniyakumari districts, and it cited corruption, collusion, and conspiratorial connivance between politicians, government officials, and private mining firms.

A Scam as Big as the 2G One

The court directed the CBI to take over the probe as the case also concerns national security due to mining of the radioactive mineral monazite — an ore of thorium.

The court has held all the reports submitted by Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers Gagandeep Singh Bedi, Satyabrata Sahoo, and amicus curiae V Suresh in connection with illegal mining and ordered the state to recover Rs 5,832.29 crore towards royalty as well as penalty for the beach sand mined illegally.

Massive illegal mining near the river beds and beaches in districts down south has been reported in the state since 2000-01, and with no measures really working, in 2013, the then-All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) government imposed a blanket ban on beach sand mining.

But nothing could really stop this powerful mafia, which had become close to both the AIADMK and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), and no real headway was being made.

According to the report by Suresh, amicus curiae appointed by the Madras High Court, the state must recover Rs 5,832 crore for ‘price of mineral’ and ‘royalties’ from miners holding 64 leases in the three districts for the massive quantities of unlawfully mined beach sand from 2002-03 to 2016.

The majority of the leases are held by V V Minerals, owned by S Vaikundarajan. The report pegs the total quantity of illegally transported raw sand alone at 88.4 lakh metric tonnes.

The court observed that there was an undeniable pattern of collusion, corruption, and connivance among political figures, executive authorities, and private mining lessees. This pattern was evident in various stages, from the granting of mining leases, approvals, and licences to the issuance of transport permits, the illegal inclusion of monazite in mining leases, the lack of efficient monitoring, and the arbitrary and legally questionable royalty settlement proceedings.

Additionally, the court noted the failure to take appropriate action when necessary and the complete absence of accountability among officials at all levels and across multiple departments.

In the event, it has ordered that all cases pending with the Tamil Nadu police in connection with illegal river and beach sand mining be transferred to the CBI, which will now have to set up different investigation teams as required. For the scam is buffeted with labyrinthine complexity. 

Less a Case, More a Dangerous Maze

Can you believe that it is a case in which an official report prepared by a senior IAS officer was reported missing?

Is it possible for you to wrap your head around the fact that in this scandal, black stone mineral (BSM) stocks of about 16.04 lakh tonnes (ilmenite, garnet, rutile, leucoxene, zircon, monazite, and sillimanite), under guard in sealed godowns, had vanished?

These would be big enough developments elsewhere for the media to go hammer and tongs on the administration, but not in Tamil Nadu, where the narrative is closely held and decided by the tight fists of the ruling cabal. So what needs to be discussed openly is insidiously interred.

Succinctly sequencing the events of this case is not all that easy as it involves too many twists and turns. In a sense, the case became a subject of outrage when, in August 2013, the then Tuticorin district raided sand quarries as there was credible information that many were operating without licences. For his efforts, the collector got transferred within 8 hours of the raid he had ordered.

But following the outcry over the questionable transfer, the then-chief minister Jayalalithaa ordered that all sand mining on Tamil Nadu's beaches be stopped forthwith. She also constituted a special team, led by the then-revenue secretary, Gagandeep Singh Bedi, to come up with a detailed dossier on illegal sand extraction in five districts, which was later extended to the rest of the state as well.

Meanwhile, the mining companies moved for their kill and termed Bedi as biased and operating with ulterior motives. All kinds of reports were planted in pliant media houses to discredit the 'Bedi report.' The mining companies even went to the extent of getting Bedi replaced off the committee. But a higher bench reinstated him.

A Report Goes Missing, and a Dubious One Emerges

Bedi's report, in any case, went missing in the bureaucratic jungle, so much so that in 2016, when an amicus curiae was appointed in the case by the court, and he asked for a copy of the report, the response from the state was that it was not available.

But when more details on the case emerged in the media, the state told the court that the Bedi report was indeed available, and the same was submitted to the court, albeit in a sealed cover.

Amid this catena of events, the administration in 2016 came up with what was referred to as a joint inspection report, prepared by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests and some departments of Tamil Nadu, including the mining one. 

How and why this report was ordered in the first place is still mired in mystery. Anyway, the report's findings conveniently emerged after the sand-mining companies brought it out in the open through a request to information (RTI) petition.

Basically, this report contradicted the Bedi report's findings. The mafia had pulled off this high-level shenanigan to stall the investigations and the progress of the case.

But the state advocate general had to tell the court that the joint inspection report was "not only in violation of the order of the court but also adversely interferes with the constitution and functioning of the special team constituted by the state Government to investigate into the complaints of illicit and illegal mining."

As it happened, the advocate general had to resign following this submission to the court. The chief minister was furious and wanted to know how this report exonerating the sand-mining lobby was prepared, and ordered the suspension of eight government officials, including a former chief secretary of the state.

Senior DMK Minister Tells Officials Not to Cooperate With Investigators

The state then sheepishly told the court that the joint inspection report was not ordered by it and formally withdrew itself from its findings. That was back during the AIADMK regime.

Under the DMK, things were no better. In September 2023, sleuths of the ED conducted surprise checks at various sand quarry sites, with officials saying they seized CCTV data, storage devices, computer hard disks, and documents related to sand mining and trading.

And in November 2023, it issued summons to 10 collectors, who are the highest authorities in their districts for sand mining, as part of its investigation into alleged irregularities.

The DMK government took the matter (of summoning the collectors) to court. The ED, for its part, alleged in an affidavit that officials of the Water Resources Department (WRD) were asked by WRD minister Duraimurugan to skip or delay appearing before the agency.

The ED claimed that it had evidence of illegal activity, including drone and LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) surveys, bathymetric surveys, and satellite imagery. This evidence, the ED said, established rampant illegal sand mining in the jurisdictions of the district collectors named in the summons.

The Madras High Court, however, suspended the ED summons, but the Supreme Court later revoked it. Following that, in April 2024, district collectors of Trichy, Thanjavur, Vellore, Karur, and Ariyalur were grilled by the ED in connection with illegal sand mining and money laundering.

As you can see, the case has made tortuous progress and has now landed at the doorsteps of the CBI. What it will unearth, if at all it does, is something that the slipping sands of time alone can reveal.