The Kerala High Court on Monday expressed deep anguish at the scale at which incidents of fraud were occurring in Kerala, known to the world in the sobriquet of god’s own country.
Stating that fraud in the State had become so rampant and large-scale that time had come to have a separate legislation with penal provisions to deal with those who defrauded the innocent public with false representations. It said many of the provisions of the IPC had been outdated and ineffective in dealing with such cases.
Dismissing the bail plea of actress Shalu Menon in a cheating case related to the infamous solar scam, Justice SS Satheeshchandran said that the reflected the ineffectiveness of the penal provisions of the IPC to curb the offences of massive fraud. Shalu is third accused in the case in which her boyfriend Biju Radhakrishnan is the first accused.
Shalu, an unsuccessful actress but a successful dancer with known links to political bigwigs, was arrested on July 5 in the case relating to the cheating of one Rafiq Ali of Thiruvananthapuram of Rs 76 lakh in association with Biju Radhakrishnan, also ex-husband of Saritha S Nair, another main perpetrator of the scam.
The court granted bail to the actress-dancer in the scam-linked case of helping Biju to escape to Tamil Nadu, from where he was arrested, after the arrest of Saritha on June 3. Biju, who had gifted large amounts of scam money to Shalu, had used her car to flee Kerala and her mobile phone while in hiding.