Tamil Nadu reports account freezes after court orders library-book fraud probe

The judges said the allegations attracted criminal-law and Prevention of Corruption Act provisions. The order directs an investigation and demands names, records and an accounting of the money; individual criminal responsibility remains to be established.

What was bought, and what remains unproven

The purchases came under scrutiny after Perumal Murugan, the Tamil novelist whose internationally recognised works include Pyre and One Part Woman, visited Periyar Arivulagam in Coimbatore. The public library, named after social reformer Periyar E. V. Ramasamy, was built at a reported cost of about 3 billion rupees and inaugurated on October 16. It was built during the previous Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) administration and opened after a change of government, according to the account of the project. The construction cost is not the amount spent on disputed books.

Murugan alleged that nearly 1,800 books in its Tamil section came from the little-known Agal Vilakku Pathippagam, with unfamiliar authors, unusually high prices and questionable International Standard Book Numbers. These are his allegations, rather than an independently established count of fraudulent purchases, as described in the reporting on his findings.

One disputed title, Naladiyar Vaazhvin Vazhikatti, was reportedly priced at 1,445 rupees for 300 pages. It describes Naladiyar as a poet and philosopher, although Naladiyar is a classical Tamil collection of 400 four-line verses on morality and ethics. Another book reportedly misattributes the ancient poem Madurai Kanchi. The listed price does not establish what the government paid or provide a like-for-like comparison with legitimate books.

The problem extends beyond obscure author names. The court recorded that economist Jean Drèze had denounced as fake a book bearing his name at the Kalaignar Centenary Library in Madurai. It also identified works falsely attributed to Subramania Bharati, the Tamil poet and freedom fighter known as Bharathiyar, according to the report on the order.

The book attributed to Drèze was published by Phoenix Publishing House. Drèze had told The Hindu that he had not written it, according to the subsequent report. A visit to a Chennai address listed by Phoenix and Agal Vilakku found no signs identifying either business, although a woman there confirmed Agal Vilakku operated at the address. Mohan declined to comment because the matter was before the courts, according to the reporting on the suppliers.

Whether AI was used to produce any of the disputed books remains unclear. False authorship and factual errors warrant scrutiny regardless of the production method; they do not, by themselves, establish AI use.

Procurement safeguards were ordered in 2024. Following the November 10 criminal-case order, the state reported account freezes on November 11 and sought four days to prepare the FIR. AI involvement remains unconfirmed. Source: The Indian Express.

The safeguards predate the AI allegations

The proceeding is a contempt petition alleging failure to follow the High Court’s June 19, 2024 procurement directions. Swaminathan sat on the bench that issued the original order; the court’s roster rules explain why the contempt case returned to a bench including him, as the November 10 order explains. That earlier judgment arose from a petition filed in 2019 concerning allegations that old literary works were being republished under different titles and authors’ names to secure fresh government orders. A procurement condition prohibited buying the same book again within five years, according to the account of the earlier case.

The prescribed safeguards included a dedicated website, notification of proposed purchases, publication of shortlisted books and a month for publishers and the public to object. The order also required an inquiry committee’s report within five months and an action-taken report within six months thereafter, according to the account of those requirements.

That history places the present allegations within an older procurement problem. The current evidence does not establish how much, if any, AI changed the economics of supplying the books.

The bench said compliance could have prevented procurement from entities it described as dubious, including Agal Vilakku, Sigma and Phoenix. It also interpreted Rule 18(4) of the Tamil Nadu Public Libraries Rules, 1950, which requires general interest and cultural value and excludes works of doubtful taste. The judges said the standard extended to non-fiction and covered dubious content, AI-generated works and plagiarism. First-time authors could still be considered if selection committees examined their books and found them suitable, according to the account of the ruling.

The court connected those duties to readers’ constitutional right to receive accurate information. The issue therefore reaches beyond financial loss: placing a falsely attributed work on a public library shelf gives readers a reason to trust an identity and content that may be fabricated.

The records needed to establish responsibility

At the November 11 hearing, Director of Public Libraries R. V. Shajeevana said 1,700 of 2,237 recommended titles, one copy each, had been bought from Agal Vilakku for Periyar Arivulagam for about 1.7 million rupees. State Public Prosecutor John Sathyan reported the account freezes and sought four days to prepare the FIR, according to the hearing report. These figures describe a specified purchase and frozen balances, not a final statewide loss estimate.

Tamil Nadu’s government has ordered an internal audit. School Education Minister A. Rajmohan said preliminary checks had led to the removal of 523 books from Chennai’s Connemara Public Library, with disputed books also removed from Periyar Arivulagam. That figure describes withdrawals after preliminary checks, rather than a final count of proven fraudulent titles.

More than 160 writers, researchers, artists and publishers have sought an independent inquiry, procurement records, a statewide collections audit and recovery of public money if misuse is established. They questioned how the books passed expert committees, price negotiations and several levels of review. The government has blamed the previous DMK administration; the party denies wrongdoing, calls the allegations politically motivated and has also called for an investigation, according to the report on the response.

The court’s order seeks evidence capable of testing those competing positions. It requires the director of public libraries to identify officials responsible for suspect procurements over the preceding two years and more, supply records, disclose the exact expenditure and file an affidavit tracing the sequence of events. Librarians must inventory suspect books and make them unavailable to readers.

The next test is the promised criminal filing and the records assigning responsibility for selection, approval and payment. Those records must establish the full spending involved and how the required checks operated; separate evidence is needed to determine whether AI produced the disputed works.

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