Thiruvananthapuram: Gold smuggling kingpin Swapna Suresh dropped another bombshell by claiming in court that she has been threatened with dire consequences if she dared to disclose the names of higher-ups involved in her various deals.
She was recording her deposition under section of 164 of CrPC in secret, which is deemed as valid evidence in any court. She has been recording her statements before the court of the additional judicial magistrate for economic offences in Kochi for the past three days, during which she reportedly claimed that a person occupying a high constitutional position had helped her in the clandestine operation.
Swapna told the court that she had been visited by a number of people while she was in the Attakkulangara women’s jail. They appeared to be jail officials or police officers, she said and added that she can identify some of them.
She expressed fears for her life as well members of her family as she was supposed to go back to the same jail on completion of her custody with the investigating agencies. The court ordered the jail chief and police to provide her adequate protection.
The explosive disclosure came even as Kerala hotly debated as to who could be the ‘occupant of high constitutional office’ referred to by Swapna even as the state went into the first phase of polling in the local body elections.
Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala dared chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan to clarify who the ‘big fish’ was while state BJP chief K Surendran claimed that Assembly Speaker P Sreeramakrishnan and some ministers had provided help to the gold smugglers using their privileged access to the airport and the green channel.
Surendran alleged that the Speaker had made several mysterious foreign trips and that he had close links with the smugglers. The visits were not even authorised by the central government, as required, he added. He added that the chief minister was the main beneficiary of various clandestine operations of Swapna Suresh and M Sivasankar, his former principal secretary.
The state BJP leader’s startling claim on Tuesday a day after he stated that the highly-placed constitutional functionary had the god’s name, but wriggled out from a commitment saying that all Indian names were based on god’s names.
But on Tuesday, he threw all caution to wind and accused the Speaker directly of involvement with Swapna Suresh’s operations.
The CPI-M sought to make light work of the allegation, asserting that the BJP leader’s claim was part of a plan to bring disrepute to the position of the Speaker.
Adding further suspense to the beneficiaries of smuggling-havala operations, chief minister’s private secretary C M Raveendran dodged yet another attempt by the Enforcement Directorate to question him in connection with benami and havala deals.
It is the third time that he is using his health as an excuse to get admitted to hospital on the eve of questioning by the investigators. When he was first summoned, he claimed he was down with Covid and later on post-Covid complications were cited for excusing himself from questioning on the second occasion.
It is widely believed that Raveendran is the crucial link in the chief minister’s office between Pinarayi Vijayan and the clandestine operations.
