Rasipuram Councillor Keeps Her Seat After Husband’s Arrest

Namakkal District Crime Branch officers arrested V. Sathish, 39, on the evening of October 7, 2026, over a complaint that he cheated a DMK town panchayat secretary of ₹2.49 crore.

Sathish is the husband of S. Sasirekha, 35, the independent councillor for Ward 12 in Rasipuram Municipality. The 2023 case names her, Sathish and his father Venkatachalam, 70. Only Sathish is in prison. She remains on the council.

Helicopters, Half-Price Cars and ₹2.49 Crore

Selvavel, 49, the DMK town panchayat secretary in Mohanur, says he met Sasirekha, Sathish and Venkatachalam in 2020. Sathish described a tourism business that rented helicopters and offered cheap cars to anyone who put money in.

The complaint goes further than that pitch. It says the family talked of wholesale trade in Chinese goods under the name Aerial Drobotics, of aircraft and helicopters taken on contract for tourists, and of cars at half price for people who invested in the work. Selvavel says he believed them.

He says he first handed over ₹17.70 lakh on December 29, 2020, to Sathish and Sasirekha, then paid more in cash and through banks until the total reached ₹2.49 crore. The cars did not arrive. When he asked for the money back, in person and by phone, Sathish’s side stalled, then issued three cheques adding up to ₹2.50 crore.

One of those cheques, for ₹1 crore, was presented on August 11, 2023. It came back in three days because the account had no funds. Selvavel later told police the family had used fake papers and had cheated other people as well. The half-price car offer was already being described in Namakkal that November as a councillor-linked Aerial Drobotics scheme, and as a loss that more than one investor wanted recovered.

THE MONEY TRAIL FROM 2020 TO 2023

1. December 29, 2020: Selvavel pays ₹17.70 lakh to Sathish and Sasirekha, the first instalment on the complaint.
2. 2020 to 2023: Further cash and bank transfers bring the sum he says he paid to ₹2.49 crore. No cars are delivered.
3. August 11, 2023: A ₹1 crore cheque from a set of three totalling ₹2.50 crore is presented and bounces in three days for want of funds.
4. November 2023: Selvavel complains to the Namakkal District Crime Branch, which registers a case against Sasirekha, Sathish and Venkatachalam.
5. October 7, 2026: DCB Inspector Indirani arrests Sathish in the evening. He is remanded in prison.

The cheques and the unpaid cars turned a private deal into a police file. What the file still does not do is take the elected member out of Ward 12.

Aerial Drobotics Was Incorporated After the First Payment

Aerial Drobotics Private Limited is a real Namakkal company, not a name invented for the file. MCA records give it CIN U29309TZ2021PTC036730, registration at the Coimbatore RoC, and a registered office at H-24, first floor, Kaveri Nagar, Trichy Road, near the Sivasakthi Vinayagar Temple, Namakkal 637001. Its listed work is manufacture of machinery and equipment, and its public profile is drone sales and farm spraying, not tourist helicopters.

The company was formed on August 4, 2021, seven months and six days after Selvavel says he paid the first ₹17.70 lakh. MCA filings list a paid-up capital of ₹3.50 lakh, the same as its authorised capital. That paid-up figure is about 71 times smaller than the ₹2.49 crore in the complaint.

The two directors appointed on the incorporation date are Venkata Chalapathy Satheesh, DIN 09267234, and Bhuvanan Thirumalai Ayyar Venkatachalapathy, DIN 09267235. The first name matches the man now in prison. The second director is not the 70-year-old father named in the FIR.

COMPANY CAPITAL AGAINST THE COMPLAINT

A ₹3.50 lakh private limited company can sell drones. It cannot, on those filings, explain a ₹2.49 crore car-and-helicopter pitch that began before the firm existed. Police have not said whether any of Selvavel’s money went through the company’s books.

Ward 12 Still Lists Sasirekha K

Sasirekha was not a councillor when the first money moved in December 2020. She became one in the February 2022 urban local body election, on a General (Women) seat, running as an independent against DMK and AIADMK nominees. The February 2022 Ward 12 result is the record of that win. Election papers list her guardian as Ve. Sathees, the same husband now in judicial custody.

WARD 12, RASIPURAM, FEBRUARY 2022

Valid votes were 1,356 from 1,801 registered electors, a turnout of 75.29 percent. Her margin over the DMK candidate was 357 votes. Rasipuram has 27 wards. The municipality’s published councillor roll for Rasipuram still names Sasirekha K, of 9 Vinjin Krishnan Lane, as the independent member for Ward 12.

She sits in a council the DMK otherwise runs. Twenty-one of the 27 wards are DMK, including Chairperson Dr. R. Kavitha Sankar of Ward 15 and Vice Chairperson Gomathi Anandhan of Ward 21. AIADMK holds two seats, VCK one, Congress one. Ward 13 has been vacant since the councillor’s death on July 12, 2023. Sasirekha is the only independent left on that list.

The complainant is a DMK town secretary. The councillor he named beat a DMK woman in Ward 12 and then kept the seat through the filing, the bounced cheque and the arrest of her husband. That overlap is on the public record. It is not proof of a party plot, and it is not a reason the case sat still.

The November 2023 Complaint Sought Three Arrests

Selvavel went to the Namakkal District Crime Branch in November 2023. The branch registered a case against Sasirekha, Sathish and Venkatachalam. His written ask was broader than a single remand.

WHAT SELVAVEL ASKED THE DCB TO DO

• The investigation: Open a probe on his petition and treat the half-price car pitch as cheating.
• The money: Recover the ₹2.49 crore he says he paid and return it to him.
• The protection: Give security to him and his family.
• The arrests: Take into custody Sathish, Sasirekha and the father he named as Venkatachalapathi.

Police inquired and did not arrest anyone then. DCB Inspector Indirani took Sathish into custody on the evening of October 7, 2026, and officers remanded him. The same reports do not say Sasirekha or Venkatachalam were detained, charged in court that day, or asked to step aside from any public role.

Sathish is the only person the DCB has produced. The councillor named beside him on the 2023 file is still the member for Ward 12, and the 70-year-old co-accused has not been brought in. Recovery of the money is not recorded.

Does a Relative’s Arrest Vacate a Councillor’s Seat?

No. Tamil Nadu municipal law does not drop a sitting councillor because a spouse is arrested, and it does not drop her because her name is on an FIR. Disqualification is built around a court’s sentence, not a police remand.

Section 12(4) of the Tamil Nadu Urban Local Bodies Act, 1998, bars a person sentenced to imprisonment for more than six months for an offence involving moral delinquency. The bar runs while the sentence is in force and for six years after it ends. Section 32 says a councillor ceases to hold office if such a sentence is passed. A husband’s remand is not in that list. An untried allegation against the member herself is not in that list either.

A person who has been sentenced by a Criminal Court to imprisonment for life or to imprisonment for a period of more than six months for any offence other than an offence of a political character or an offence not involving moral delinquency (such sentence not having been reversed or the offence pardoned) shall be disqualified for being elected as a councillor while the sentence is in force for the further period of six years from the date of the expiration of the sentence.

Tamil Nadu Urban Local Bodies Act, 1998, Section 12(4)

If someone alleges that a sitting member is already disqualified, Section 35 sends the question to the Principal District Judge. Until that court decides, the member “shall be entitled to act as if he was not disqualified.” No such order is on the public record for Ward 12. Sasirekha can attend meetings, vote, and hold the seat she won in 2022 unless a conviction, a court declaration, or a later election removes her.

The Act is doing what it was written to do. It keeps elected members in place through a police case and shifts the hard stop to a criminal sentence. For Ward 12 that means the independent who beat DMK in 2022 is still the councillor, while the man listed as her guardian on the election paper is the one in prison.

Sasirekha and Venkatachalam Have Not Been Arrested

The file that began in November 2023 still has three names on it. One of those names is in judicial custody after the October 7 arrest. The other two are not. Selvavel has not, on any account released with the arrest, received the ₹2.49 crore back.

Aerial Drobotics remains the company whose incorporation, capital and directors sit on the MCA register, and whose name sat on the pitch Selvavel says he bought. Whether that firm took his money, whether the councillor took part, and whether anyone else paid into the same half-price car offer are questions for the DCB and the court, not for a remand order.

Until those questions are tried, Rasipuram’s Ward 12 continues to be represented by S. Sasirekha, independent, as her husband’s cheating case moves without her.