Kerala’s scam-beleaguered Congress-led UDF Government has suffered a political and moral jolt with the appearance in the media of parts of a note con woman Saritha S Nair, main perpetrator of the solar scam, had allegedly written when she was in prison in which she has accused certain UDF leaders of exploiting her sexually and financially. However, Saritha on Tuesday said what appeared in the media was not part of her note.
As per the ‘disclosures’ by certain TV channels, the con woman had claimed in her note that Jose K Mani, MP of the Kerala Congress (M) and son of its chairman and the State’s tainted Finance Minister, KM Mani, and certain Congress leaders had taken money from her and had used her sexually.
“I had suffered a lot in order to ensure the survival of this (UDF) Government,” media reports quoted Saritha as writing in her note, prepared when she was in judicial custody in a prison in Pathanamthitta. The ruling Congress party took a position that the note itself was inauthentic and therefore there was no need to respond to reports based on it.
According to observers, the Government, already beleaguered by several scams and problems within the constituent parties of the front, will find it difficult to wriggle out of the moral and political pit the reports on the controversial note have already created irrespective of whether the note itself was original as the reports claim or forged as Saritha says.
Mentions like “I gave them money whenever they wanted and (my) body whenever they desired” and “They took through threats and promises the body of Saritha alias lakshmi whenever they wanted,” are found in the pages of Saritha’s note as per reports. Saritha claimed that the pages being circulated in the media were not from the note that she had written.
“The solar scam was just a financial fraud. Those who had gained from it are Biju Radhakrishnan (her former live-in partner and co-accused in the case) and Salu Menon (a dancer and his girlfriend) and the politicians. All that I have got from this business are promises. Why didn’t the leaders who had taken money from me return it when things went badIJ” she asks.
Jose K Mani and Saritha S Nair were quick to find KC(M) vice-chairman PC George responsible for the leak of the note to the media in the context of the tainted Finance Minister’s demand to Chief Minister Oommen Chandy to remove him as Government Chief Whip. Both demanded investigations into the matter while George himself called for a CBI probe.
Ever since the first reports on Saritha’s prison note came out soon after the solar scam erupted in 2013, it had been hanging like a sword above the head of the Congress and the UDF because of rumours that it contained damaging disclosures about how certain leaders had exploited her sexually and financially by promising Governmental help for her solar power business.