The Kerala Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB) may once again question State Finance Minister KM Mani, who has been accused of taking Rs1 crore as bribe from the State’s bar owners. The agency is also planning to question Mani’s wife Kuttiyamma and son Jose K Mani MP in connection with the case, according to sources.
Superintendent of Police (Vigilance) R Sukesan, who is heading the team investigating the bar bribery case, had on Friday night questioned Mani for an hour at a guest house in Kovalam near Thiruvananthapuram. The agency had recorded his statement earlier during its 42-day “quick verification” of the charge on the basis of which an FIR was registered against him.
The Vigilance wants to question the Finance Minister for a third time as there are some contradictions in the statements he had given on the two different occasions. Mani is accused of demanding Rs5 crore and taking Rs1 crore of it from the bar owners promising to help them to get the licences renewed for their closed bars.
Mani said there was nothing unusual in the questioning by Vigilance. “When there is a case, the questioning gives me an opportunity to say what I want to say,” he said in Kottayam on Saturday. Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala, who also holds the Vigilance portfolio, said the questioning was part of the Vigilance probe.
The Vigilance will take a final decision on questioning Mani once again after carefully analysing the statements given by him and the bar owners who had talked to the Vigilance in his favour and against him. However, sources said that the questioning of Mani would take place before the close of this month.
According to Biju Ramesh, working president of the Kerala Bar Hotels’ Association, who had leveled the bribery charge against Mani, Rs35 lakh, third installment of the Rs1-crore bribe, was paid to him at his official residence on April 2, 2014. Biju also said that the money was taken to Mani’s residence in his car by office-bearers of the association.
Ambili, driver of Biju, had told the Vigilance that it was he who had taken association president D Rajkumar to Mani’s residence on the particular day. Though Mani has consistently maintained that no bar owner had met him or paid him money, the Vigilance has already got evidences suggesting that Biju’s car had indeed reached the Minister’s residence.
The Vigilance’s plan to question Mani’s wife Kuttiyamma is based on the disclosure of a bar owner that money had been paid to the Finance Minister also at his residence in Pala, Kottayam and that he had seen the Minister handing over that money to his wife. There were allegations against his son Jose also.
According to sources, there is a strong opinion in a section of the VACB that the investigation would not be complete without recording the statement of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy as Biju Ramesh had said that he had informed Chandy about the demand of Mani for bribe. The bar owner had said that Chandy had asked him not to pay money to anyone.
At the same time, the agency is likely to soon record the statement of former Government Chief Whip PC George, disgruntled vice-chairman of Mani’s party, the Kerala Congress (M), as he has written to it saying that he has in his possession crucial information on the bribe paid to the Finance Minister by bar owners.
When the Vigilance had questioned him earlier, George had spoken in favour of Mani as he was his supporter at that time. George was later removed as Chief Whip at the insistence of Mani after he repeatedly and publicly demanded his resignation as Finance Minister in the context of the serious charge against him.