less than 24 hours after receiving the prestigious UN Global Award for Public Service, Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy was pushed into a spot on Friday with the police arresting Tenny Joppen, one of his closest former aides, in a cheating case related to con woman Saritha S Nair’s links with the CM’s office in the infamous solar power scam.
Joppen’s arrest generated sharp and immediate responses from the Opposition lDF which reiterated its determination to intensify the agitation demanding Chandy’s resignation and a judicial probe into the solar power scandal. The Opposition has been on an agitation over the scam since June 14.
The special Kerala Police team probing the solar power scam arrested Joppen on Friday afternoon at the end of a six-hour-long questioning, after being fully convinced that he had played a vital role in the scam and had cheated a resident of Pathanamthitta resident by taking Rs40 lakh from him — along with Saritha Nair — promising to install solar power project for him.
Joppen, who was removed on June 14 as personal assistant to Chandy after it was proved that he had made scores of phone calls to Saritha Nair prior to her arrest on June 3, admitted to the police that he had misused the Chief Minister’s office for committing frauds along with Saritha and her fraudster ex-husband Biju Radhakrishnan.
The arrest is sure to make the situation worse for Chandy, especially as Joppen has been known as one of his three or four most trusted aides whose telephones he used to use inside his office and outside. The Opposition alleges that several of these calls between Joppen and Saritha could have been meant for Chandy himself.
The arrest was on the basis of a complaint from one Sreedharan Nair of Konny, Pathanamthitta from whom Rs40 lakh was taken on the promise to install a solar power plant for him in Palakkad. Saritha and Biju, also accused of murdering his former wife in 2006, had cheated dozens of people by taking crores of rupees from them in the name of their fraudulent firm.
The police team, headed by Additional DGP A Hemachandran, learned that Nair was called to the Chief Minister’s office in July last year for striking the deal for the solar power plant and that Saritha was with Joppen when it was struck. Police sources said that Saritha also had given them statements on Joppen’s involvement in the racket.
“The arrest is not based on rumours and suspicions but on the basis of solid evidences. Details of all that would be submitted before the court,” ADGP Hemachandran said. Joppen, who has been arrested on the charge of cheating, is now a co-accused in the solar power scam along with Saritha and Biju.
Joppen himself had reportedly admitted during the questioning at the DySP office in Chengannur, Alappuzha that he had close relationship with Saritha and Biju Radhakrishnan. Joppen had direct role in the solar power frauds which, according to Government Chief Whip PC George, could have become a Rs10,000-crore scam if it had gone undetected, they said.
The findings of the police, Joppen’s own admissions and his arrest have pushed Chief Minister Chandy further into the defensive in front of a furious Opposition which would settle for nothing less than his resignation and a judicial probe into the affair concerning the solar power scam, the links of CM’s office with it and Chandy’s own alleged role in it.
The Chief Minister had earlier admitted that he himself had met Biju Radhakrishnan at Kochi in August last. However, Chandy has so far refused to divulge the content of their one-hour talk, saying it was personal and family-related. Chandy is also accused of meeting Saritha Nair at Vigyan Bhavan in Delhi during an NDC meeting last December.