The CPI(M) on Friday declared Congress Chief Minister Oommen Chandy as the main culprit in the infamous solar scam involving politicians, fraudsters and con women amidst a united Congress bid to resist the Opposition attacks against Chandy, whose survival as CM now depended on the evaluation of the situation by his party’s high command.
Talking to mediapersons at Thiruvananthapuram on Friday, State CPI(M) secretary Pinarayi Vijayan pooh-poohed the ongoing probe, headed by Additional DGP A Hemachandran, into the scam by saying, “The investigators, working under the CM, are trying to exempt him from the case. The investigation has turned into a farce.”
Reiterating the Opposition demand for Chandy’s resignation as CM and a judicial probe into the scam, Pinarayi said, “Chandy is proving to be an expert in the art of denial. He is doing verbal juggleries to escape from the trap he has fallen into. He cannot escape because evidences against him are pouring down heavily.”
The solar scam pertains to the fraud committed by con woman Saritha S Nair, her ex-husband Biju Radhakrishnan and his girlfriend and actress Shalu Menon who collected crores of rupees from people promising to install solar power plants and wind farms for them and duped them under the alleged patronage of Congress Ministers other influential people. “Chandy’s former aide Tenny Joppen was arrested not for embracing Saritha Nair but because the CM’s office had become the headquarters of this fraud. Scam victim Sreedharan Nair says that he had given money to the perpetrators on the basis of the CM’s personal assurance. It is obvious that Chandy played the main role in this,” Pinarayi said.
“Another scam victim had complained to the Chief Minister about how Saritha had cheated him after taking money from him. He now says that Saritha had called him the very next day and asked about the things he had told Chandy. That gives enough indications on the kind of close connections Chandy had with Saritha,” he said.
Pinarayi termed as a trick Chandy’s offer to include an Opposition representative in the three-man panel he proposed to examine the CCTV footage of the surroundings of his office for July 9, 2012 to know whether Saritha was there on that day.
Chandy tried to put up a bold face on Friday by sending copies of an article to the media in which he declared that his hands were clean and found fault with the CPI(M)-led Opposition lDF for launching a vicious campaign against him “over a simple fraud involving two or three women” by saying, “Their aim is not to find out the truth. They are thirsting for my blood.”