The Supreme Court on Tuesday pulled up the Tamil Nadu government for “committing a fraud on the system” solely to protect former minister Senthil Balaji by roping in over 2,000 people as accused in a money-laundering case relating to the alleged 2014-15 cash-for-jobs scam against him when he was handling the transport ministry.

“You are more keen to prosecute them (bribe givers) so that in the entire lifetime of the minister, the trial proceedings never come to an end. This is your modus operandi. This is a complete fraud being committed on the system,” Justice Surya Kant, heading the bench, told senior advocates Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Amit Anand Tiwari during a hearing.

The bench, which included Justice Joymalya Bagchi, made the observations after going through the files sent to it by the trial court in Tamil Nadu, which had stated that 2,300 accused had been arrayed in the case by the state in connection with the alleged scam.

The court was dealing with an appeal filed by Y. Balaji, representing some of the alleged victims in the scandal, challenging a Madras High Court decision rejecting his plea to quash the clubbing of multiple supplementary chargesheets with the main chargesheet.

The Supreme Court was of the view that deliberately including 2,300 people in the list of accused was an attempt to delay the trial indefinitely. “These are all poor persons who were coerced by your minister or his henchmen to pay amounts ranging from ₹5,000, ₹10,000, ₹1 lakh or ₹2 lakh. You are more keen to prosecute them so that in the entire lifetime of the minister, the trial will never come to an end,” Justice Kant observed.

Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayan told the bench that the state was colluding with the former minister to delay the trial. The court adjourned the matter for further hearing to Wednesday.

Senthil had resigned on April 24, a day after the Supreme Court gave him the choice to decide whether he wanted to be a minister in the cabinet or go back to jail in connection with the money-laundering cases registered against him by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) relating to the alleged cash-for-jobs scam.

The court was dealing with an application filed by one of the witnesses in the case who alleged that Senthil was influencing witnesses after being re-inducted into the cabinet by the M.K. Stalin government in September last year after being granted bail.