Kerala’s beleaguered Congress on Friday suffered a huge blow in connection with the infamous solar scam after its alleged bid to ‘bribe’ con woman Saritha S Nair, one of the main perpetrators of the scam, in order to force her to hide her connections with some State Ministers, a Union Minister and certain top leaders came to light.
An MlA of the Congress from central Kerala and some party leaders had allegedly struck a deal with Fenni Balakrishnan, lawyer of Saritha, arrested on June 3 in the solar scam, not to mention the names of certain Ministers and leaders of the party and the ruling UDF and to include the names of some adversaries in a complaint she is to submit to a Kochi court before July 31.
Allegations of the secret Congress bid strengthened with a TV channel releasing on Friday recordings of a Congress Minister’s telephonic talk giving indications about a move for reaching a settlement with Saritha. According to the channel, an industrialist based in Malappuram had dealt directly with Saritha on behalf of two Ministers.
State BJP general secretary K Surendran, who had already made some startling disclosures on the alleged role of the Congress and Chief Minister Oommen Chandy in the scam, said that those who had been executing the plan were Congress’s Excise Minister K Babu and party MlA Benny Behennan.
Saritha is expected to reveal in the coming days the names of the people in power who had “used” her in a complaint she is expected to lodge soon. She had already given an oral in-camera statement to the court in which she reportedly named certain top personalities including State Ministers, a former Minister, a Union Minister and some others.
Surendran said that it was Benny Behennan who had bargained with Fenni Balakrishnan. As per the allegation, the lawyer had asked for `10 crore to make Saritha write her statement as they wished but the deal was struck for `4 crore. A UDF leader said that certain Congressmen had indeed made secret moves to strike a deal with Saritha.
“It is a fact that Benny Behennan and K Babu have been running around with bags full of money to somehow suppress Saritha’s statement and to protect Chandy,” Surendran said. He said he had evidences to back his allegation which he would release soon but Babu and Benny rejected the charges.
The plot effectively collapsed on Friday after the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Court in Kochi asked Saritha to prepare her complaint herself and not to let the lawyer do it for her. As per the earlier plan, Fenni was to write down the complaint in consultation with her at the women’s prison in Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday.
After the High Court asked the police to let her submit her statement to the Additional CJM Court, the police hastily shifted Saritha to a less crowded women’s prison in Thiruvananthapuram from a Pathanamthitta jail citing security reasons. However, it is now alleged that this was done to facilitate the bargaining.
As per reports, those who had bargained with Saritha’s lawyer had wanted the names of some of those who had been attacking the Congress over the scam, especially Government Chief Whip PC George of the Kerala Congress (M), included in the list of leaders she was going to attach to her statement.
Scam victim Mallelil Sreedharan Nair, who had accused the Chief Minister of active involvement in the scam, had said earlier that certain Congress leaders had approached him with an offer to pay him `40 lakh (the amount he had given to Saritha for a solar power plant) or more if he was ready to withdraw his allegation against Chandy.