Pushing Kerala’s beleaguered Congress Chief Minister Oommen Chandy further into the defensive, prime accused in the case Saritha S Nair on Monday handed over to the judicial panel looking into the scandal three CDs and other documents to substantiate the allegations she had raised before it against him and his associates.
Two of the three CDS which Saritha handed over to the Justice (Retired) G Sivarajan Judicial Commission on Monday as she appeared before it for deposition allegedly contained conversations between her and Congress leaders Benny Behannan MlA, PCC general secretary Thampanoor Ravi, close confidants of Chandy, and his former gunman Salim Raj.
According to Saritha, the third CD contained video footage showing industrialist Abraham Kalamannil, an initiator of the controversial Aranmula International Airport Project, telling her associate that she should destroy the evidences she had got against the Chief Minister after she had deposed before the commission against him.
Saritha also produced before the commission some documents one of which was a letter of recommendation written by her and allegedly signed by Chandy for expediting the re-survey process of a land owned by one of her acquaintances. She had produced this as proof of the direct connection she had had with Chandy. The commission has accepted the evidence.
Embarrassing the Chandy camp in the Congress, she said she had filed a rape complaint against AP Abdullakutty MlA in March, 2014 as a ploy to “cool down” the heat generated by the solar scam and this was done at Thampanoor Ravi’s insistence. “later, Benny Behennan advised me to step back after the matter became a big issue in the Congress,” she told newsmen.
Saritha had last week pushed the Congress-led UDF Government into a big crisis with her deposition before the commission that she had paid Rs 1.90 crore and Rs 40 lakh respectively as bribe to Chief Minister Chandy and his Power Minister Aryadan Muhammad for getting governmental support for the projects of her company, Team Solar Energy Solutions.
She had told the panel that the Chief Minister wanted his son Chandy Oommen to be made part of the solar power business and that he had involvement in a US-based energy company. She alleged that Chandy Oommen had travelled to the Gulf with a woman, another accused in the solar scam case, and Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan was in possession of proof of this.