Saris worth Rs 13 lakh bought in two years, Rs 20 lakh for household expenses for similar period and Rs 5 lakh for a three-day trip to Ooty. These are not entries in the expense list of some woman corporate leader or highly paid professional.
These are some examples of how Saritha S Nair, the 35-year-old daughter of a simple school hostel warden, and her former live-in partner Biju Radhakrishnan, perpetrators of Kerala’s infamous solar scam, had enjoyed life with the crores of rupees they collected by duping unsuspecting businessmen promising to install solar power projects.
According to the special investigation team of the Kerala Police which probed the cases of fraud charged against Saritha and Biju, they had collected about Rs 6 crore from people in the name of solar power projects over a three-year period and had spent over Rs 5.5 crore of this money for living in dreamlike luxury.
Apart from the details given above, Team Solar Energy Solutions, the bogus company Saritha and Biju had floated in order to collect money through fraudulent means, had spent Rs 20 lakh for paying film stars who had participated in the programmes they organised and Rs 70 lakh for shows like award nights, as per a list prepared by the police.
Rs 25 lakh for Team Solar’s publicity campaigns, Rs 10 lakh as prize money for the environment activism award they instituted and Rs 6 lakh for stay in luxury hotels were other entries in the list the police had drawn up. Apart from all these, Biju had gifted Rs 1.21 crore from Team Solar’s kitty to his lover and actress-dancer Shalu Menon for building her palatial house.
The list of the extravagant expenses of the fraudster duo came out following last week’s High Court directive to the police to inform it about the quantum of money Saritha had collected from her victims and how these amounts were spent. The court had also asked the police to find out the source of money she had used to settle many of the scam-related cases out of court.
“All of us were surprised to find Saritha appearing in a different sari or Churidhar-Kurtas, very expensive and stylish, every time she was brought to a court. But now we know how she could afford it. When you have decided to live on others’ money, why should you be a miserIJ That could have been her philosophy,” said a top police official.
Saritha and Biju had perpetrated the solar scam with the help of close aides of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and it is alleged that they had used his office as their operational base for the frauds. As allegations raged to the effect that Saritha had Chandy’s direct blessings, pictures had come out showing her speaking intimately to him at the venue of a public programme.
According to the information provided by the police to the High Court, Saritha and Biju had handled the money they collected through fraudulent means through 16 different bank accounts all of which were later frozen. However, the police said that though they had collected nearly Rs 6 crore from their victims these accounts did not hold more than Rs 100,000 presently.
The High Court on Tuesday granted bail to Saritha in two cases. With this, the total number of cases in which she has got bail has come to 33 while a total of 36 scam-related cases had been registered against her. The police told the court that they did not think the money Saritha had used for settling cases with the victims had not come from the Rs 6 crore they had collected.
“I will disclose everything when the time comes,” Saritha said on Tuesday when she was brought to a court in Thiruvalla, Pathanamthitta. Asked about the identity of the person who was trying to keep her in the prison as her mother Indira had alleged earlier, she said, “I have never said that there are problems in getting bail.”