The scandal involving ‘con woman’ Saritha S Nair, arrested on June 3 for large-scale money-swindling in the name of a solar power firm, and the office of Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy got murkier on Saturday with her former husband’s disclosure on her links with top Congress leaders and that the Chief Minister himself had intervened to save their marriage.
Saritha’s ex-husband Biju Radhakrishnan, first accused (now absconding) in the case in which she was arrested as second accused, told the media on Saturday that KB Ganesh Kumar, who resigned recently as Chandy’s Forest Minister recently under ungracious circumstances, had unholy relationship with her and this had led to the break-up of their marriage.
The scandal has already taken a heavy toll on the image of Chandy and his two-year-old Government with the Opposition lDF preparing to launch a ferocious campaign demanding his resignation. Chandy was the other day forced to remove two members of his personal staff over the suspicious telephone conversations between them and Saritha Nair.
Saritha and her ex-husband Biju, who were running a company specialising in installation of solar power plants and wind farms, had cheated several people in Kerala by collecting crores of rupees promising to install solar power systems and offering franchisees of their firm. Saritha is said to have been using her alleged links with the CM’s office and other politicians for this.
According to Biju, Ganesh (then Forest Minister) and Saritha had spent a night together in a hotel at Coimbatore. Kerala’s Government Chief Whip PC George, also known as Chandy’s personal trouble-shooter, had the other day said that Saritha was one of the 23 women with whom Ganesh Kumar had been keeping unholy relationships.
Biju said that he had met the Chief Minister in Kochi requesting to intervene to help him save the marriage and that it was Congress MP MI Shanavas who had helped him meet the CM. “Chandy promised me all the help,” he said.
“But the very next day Saritha asked me about my meeting with the Chief Minister and I was then sure that whatever I had told him had been conveyed to her. (Union Minister) KC Venugopal also asked her about the role of Ganesh Kumar. I don’t blame the CM but his office people were doing things by-passing him,” he said.
However, Ganesh Kumar denied the charge, saying he was ready to end his political life if it was proved. His father R Balakrishna Pillai, the only former minister in Kerala to be punished for corruption, alleged that the charge was part of a conspiracy and that it was intended at maligning Ganesh, who could possibly be re-inducted into the Chandy Cabinet.
Trying to explain his links with Saritha, Venugopal said, “She had met me twice or three times requesting me to inaugurate some solar power project of theirs. There had been no other conversation.” Shanavas said he only tried to help an ordinary man, who came to him through one of his aides, Hakkim.
Biju said that their company got into trouble after their marriage broke. Just as Biju’s ‘revelations’ came, the Kerala Police, already probing the cheating cases involving Saritha and him and her alleged links with the CM’s office, constituted a special team of six Deputy Superintendents of Police, headed by an Additional DGP.
Ganesh, lone MlA of Congress’s minor ally in the ruling UDF, Kerala Congress (B), had resigned as Forest minister on April 2 following a complaint of domestic violence lodged by his now-estranged wife Yamini Thankachi. Chandy had tried to save their marriage by talking to both Ganesh and Thankachi.
The biggest problem for Chandy, leading the ‘A’ group of Kerala’s Congress, is that his party or any leader is not coming forward to support him in the moment of crisis. State Congress president Ramesh Chennithala, head of the party’s ‘I’ group, has not yet been ready even to comment on the controversy.