Kerala’s 89-year-old Opposition leader VS Achuthanandan, also a central committee member of the CPI(M), will move the High Court seeking a comprehensive probe under its supervision into the solar power scam in which Congress Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, State and Central Ministers, ministerial aides and others are allegedly involved.
The crisis emanating from the scam involving con women, actresses, fraudsters and politicians for the Congress-led UDF Government is expected to deepen further after Achuthanandan files a petition in the court and the CPI(M)-led Opposition lDF intensifying its agitation demanding the Chief Minister’s resignation. The State CPI(M) secretariat which met the other day in Thiruvananthapuram permitted Achuthanandan to go ahead with his plan to approach the High Court with the complaint that the probe by a special Kerala Police team into the scam, launched by the Government, was moving in the wrong direction and that a fair probe was possible only under the court’s supervision.
One of the critical arguments Achuthanandan is expected to present before the court is that the special police team, which is now probing the scam merely as a case of financial fraud, is not directing its probe into the statements made by victim Mallelil Sreedharan Nair about the CM’s involvement. Nair had in his complaint as well as in the statement he had given in the court under Section 164 of the CrPC submitted that he had given Rs 40 lakh to con woman Saritha S Nair, one of the main scam perpetrators, for installing a solar power plant after Chandy assured him of the credibility of her company at the CM’s office on July 9, 2012.
Achuthanandan will tell the High Court that the special investigation team headed by Additional DGP A Hemachandran, a close relative of one of Chandy’s former Cabinet colleagues, is refusing to arrest persons like Jikkumon Jacob and Salim Raj, former Chandy aides, against whom serious allegations of association with Saritha Nair have been leveled. likewise, the refusal of the police who had arrested Chandy’s former aide Tenny Joppen in one of the 31 cases associated with the scam, will figure in the petition Achuthanandan is to submit in the High Court. He will also seek orders for investigation into the allegations that have come up against several Kerala Ministers, a Union Minister and others.
Achuthanandan will also seek the court’s intervention in the issue of the refusal by the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (Economic Offences), in Kochi to record the statement Saritha had given on July 25. Instead of recording it himself, the judge on July 26 asked Saritha to write down her complaint and hand it over to him through the jail authorities before July 31. Saritha’s lawyer had earlier said that she had made several shocking disclosures about her connections with top men when she spoke with judge on July 20 but the complaint she gave in writing 10 days later did not have any mention in this direction. The Opposition alleges that the judge was responsible for this ‘sabotage’ of Saritha’s statement. Observers say that the Chandy-led Government would find the going tough with Achuthanandan dealing with the scam in the court and the lDF launching on August 12 the second phase of its agitation demanding the Chief Minister’s resignation.