Ex-Kerala minister Antony found guilty of evidence tampering in 1990 drug case
A court here on Saturday found former Kerala transport minister Antony Raju guilty of tampering with evidence in a drug seizure case booked in 1990. He was convicted for 3 years and will lose the MLA post immediately.
Raju is a serving MLA of Janadhipathya Kerala Congress, an LDF member. The Nedumangad Judicial First-Class Magistrate convicted Raju in connection with the seizure of 61.5 grams of hashish from an Australian citizen at Thiruvananthapuram international airport in 1990.
Raju, who was then a junior lawyer, had appeared for the accused in the case. While a sessions court had initially convicted the accused, Andre Salvatore Cervelli, he was later acquitted by the Kerala High Court in 1991. The acquittal was based on the defence argument that the innerwear in which the contraband was allegedly concealed was too small to fit the accused.
A subsequent probe revealed that Raju, along with a court official named Jose, had conspired to tamper with the material evidence kept in the Magistrate’s court, the prosecution said. The Nedumangadu Judicial First-Class Magistrate Court- I found Raju guilty under Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence), 193 (fabricating false evidence), 409 (criminal breach of trust) and 34 (criminal acts done by several people with common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The Court also found one KJ Jose, who was a court clerk, guilty under the same penal provisions.
A few years later, after Cervelli returned to his home country, the investigating officer in the smuggling case approached the Kerala High Court seeking a probe to find out if there was any evidence tampering.
The investigating officer filed this plea based on certain information received from the Australian National Central Bureau. A criminal complaint was then registered against Raju and court clerk KJ Jose in 1994. After 12 years, in 2006, the Assistant Commissioner of Police filed a charge sheet before the Magistrate's court.
The High Court, however, quashed the trial court proceedings on a technical ground in March last year. Pertinently, the High Court clarified that its order would not be a bar on pursuing prosecution as per the provisions of Section 195(1)(b) of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The High Court went one step further and ordered its Registry itself to initiate proceedings, paving the way for the trial court at Thiruvananthapuram to restart criminal proceedings against Raju.
Raju then moved the Supreme Court for relief in light of a Thiruvananthapuram court initiating proceedings against him in the case.
However, in November 2024, the Supreme Court dismissed his petition and officially restored criminal proceedings against Raju.
The trial court then resumed proceedings, culminating in Raju’s conviction on Saturday, 35 years after the crime.
