The Kerala Police on Thursday made a weak effort to give clean chit to Congress Chief Minister Oommen Chandy in the infamous solar scam by claiming that no statement existed on his involvement in it.
However, the bid collapsed before the public with one of the scam victims asserting that he had indeed given a statement against Chandy and that he still stood by it. In a report filed before the Kerala High Court, Additional DGP A Hemachandran, head of the special investigation team looking into the solar scam, said that scam victim Mallelil Sreedharan Nair of Konni, Pathanamthitta had told the police that he did not believe Chandy had any role in the operations of con woman Saritha S Nair, one of the main perpetrators of the scam.
The ADGP said that Sreedharan Nair had said this to the police when he was questioned on the basis of the confidential statement he had given in a Pathanamthitta court under Section 164 of the CrPC in which he said he had given Saritha money after the Chief Minister gave personal assurances on her business during a meeting at his office.
Rejecting the claim of the ADGP, Sreedharan Nair spoke to the media within minutes of this police submission in the court to say that he stood by his Section 164 statement. “I challenge the police to publish that statement. I stand by it,” he said reiterating that he had never told the police that Chandy need not have any involvement in the Solar scam.
According to Nair, he had said in the statement given at the First Class Judicial Magistrate Court, Pathanamthitta that he released the last installment of the Rs 40 lakh he had given to Saritha for installing a solar power plant after his meet with the Chief Minister at his office in the State Secretariat on July 9, 2012 in her presence and that of Chandy’s then aide Tenny Joppen.
In the report filed before the High Court in response to a petition filed by rights activist Joy Kaitharam seeking orders for the confiscation of the CCTV clippings of the Chief Minister’s office for the day of the meeting between Chandy and Nair, Hemachandran said that the police had not yet been able to retrieve the CCTV recordings.
Stating that the efforts to retrieve recordings were continuing, he requested the court not to honour the petition as CCTV clippings had not so far been used in the probe of any criminal case in the State. Chandy himself had claimed that there was no CCTV surveillance in his office and the CCTV recordings of the surroundings were not being kept for more than two weeks.
The SIT is looking into 33 cases registered at various police stations in the State in connection with the solar scam perpetrated by Saritha and her ex-husband Biju Radhakrishnan. However, the most crucial among them is the case based on the complaint of Sreedharan Nair, a quarry owner and a Congressman mainly because of the direct allegations against Chandy.
ADGP Hemachandran, said to be a close relative of a former Minister in the Chandy Cabinet, also told the court that they had not registered any case against the CM’s former aides Jikkumon Jacob and Salim Raj as extensive inquiries had failed to produce any proof for their involvement in the scam.
He said Tenny Joppen, who had been in regular contact with Saritha, was arrested as a result of the fair investigations but there were no grounds to proceed against Jikkumon or Salim Raj. Both these former Chandy aides had been accused of having close connections with Saritha and of helping her misuse the Chief Minister’s office for her fraudulent solar power business.