Evidences seem to have a tendency to disappear mysteriously in scams with alleged links to Kerala’s Congress Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and his aides. The latest disappearance of proof happened in the land scam in Thiruvananthapuram in which his former gunman Salim Raj was involved even as Opposition leader VS Achuthanandan blasted Chandy over the scandal.
Parts of a crucial register with the records of lands related to the land scam in which Salim Raj is a key accused have reportedly gone “missing” from the Kadakampally Village Office in Thiruvananthapuram in the area under which Chandy’s ex-gunman with his associated had usurped 44.5 acres of land valued at over `200 crore with the alleged help of officials.
This report came out a day after the Kerala Police filed the chargesheet in a crucial case relating to the infamous solar scam in which Chandy was allegedly involved. The chargesheet said that the CCTV recordings of the Chief Minister’s office for a particular day, which could prove whether a particular scandalous meeting had taken place there, could not be retrieved.
Observers say that this seems to be a contagious disease affecting the Congress. “When the missing CCTV clippings were subject of hot debates here, we heard of some key files on the coal scam missing in the Centre. Now land records related to a huge scam linked to Chandy’s former gunman are missing,” said a Congress leader belonging to Chandy’s enemy camp.
The land scam pertains to the usurpation by Salim Raj and his associates with the alleged connivance of Revenue Department officials of 44.5 acres belonging to some 40 people in Kadakampally in Thiruvananthapuram. They did this by changing the Thandapper (register numbers of the lands) in the Revenue records.
According to the actual land owners, the Revenue officials had refused to accept the land tax from them saying that the land did not belong to them as per records. Though they complained to the Chief Minister himself and the district collector, no action has so far been taken to return their usurped land to them.
In a case related to the scam, the Kerala High Court had over a month back ordered the Revenue Department to produce the land ownership records. The Kadakampally Village Officer is said to have reported to the Taluk office that parts of the register containing crucial information on this had been lost. Records of the illegal registration of land for the usurpers have also gone missing.
The State Advocate General had recently surprised Keralites by personally appearing twice in the HC to argue that phone records of Salim Raj could not be seized. The Government’s stand on cases involving Salim Raj, an ordinary policeman, had forced the court to ask what interests it had in a case involving private persons.
Opposition leader Achuthanandan, who visited Kadakampally on Saturday and met the actual land owners, leveled alleged that Chandy was directly involved in the scam. He wanted to know how Salim Raj, an ordinary policeman who was Chandy’s gunman for the past eight years, could acquire assets worth `250 crore.
“The HC says that there are influential people behind Salim Raj but refuses to openly utter the names of those influential people. Even the judiciary is afraid of uttering the name of Chandy in connection with the scam. The court is standing scared in the issue like someone who is seeing a serpent in front of him,” Achuthanandan said.
When the Opposition had wanted the CCTV clippings of the CM’s office for July 9, 2012 to be examined to confirm whether Saritha S Nair of the solar scam had met Chandy on that day, he said his office was not being monitored by CCTV camera but was being webcast round the clock and records for this were not being kept.
However, Chandy was forced to order a probe in this direction after IT experts came out with the claim that recordings could be retrieved. On Friday, the police’s special investigation team produced a forensic letter along with the chargesheet in a case relating to the solar scam saying that the CCTV recordings could not be retrieved.