A special court in Kochi dealing with cases related to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) on Thursday rejected the bail petition of Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s former principal secretary M Sivasankar, who has been in jail for two weeks.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) that arrested Sivasankar on February 15 in connection with the alleged irregularities in the Life Mission project, a scheme to provide houses for the poor, opposed his bail saying the case was in initial stages and releasing him at this juncture will affect the ongoing probe. It also said there were strong evidence against him and he may influence witnesses and others if released.
But the former bureaucrat, who was once very close to CM Pinarayi Vijayan, contended that he was implicated on the basis of some unfounded accusations and charges. He said he has no role in the bribery case and sought bail as he was facing many health problems. At this point, the federal agency said he was getting proper medical attention. It also said the chief minister’s additional private secretary C M Raveendran was also summoned next week and it has to interrogate both to take the case to the next level.
After hearing both sides in detail, the court rejected Sivasankar’s bail petition. His lawyers said they will move the high court soon. He was in the custody of the ED for nine days and later remanded to judicial custody. In 2020, he was in jail for almost three months after the gold smuggling case came to light. Besides the ED case, he was also an accused in customs and CBI cases.
The alleged kickbacks in the Life Mission project came to light when central agencies were investigating the gold smuggling case in which 30 kg of smuggled gold was seized from the UAE consulate in the state Capital, Thiruvananthapuram, in June 2020. The agencies found ₹1 crore cash and 2 kg gold after opening the lockers of the main accused in smuggling case, Swapna Suresh, a former employee of the consulate.She reportedly told them that the currency was the commission received for clinching a deal with the international aid agency Red Crescent for building a flat in Thrissur for the flood-affected.
The agencies found that out of ₹18.50 crore accepted from the Red Crescent, ₹4 crore allegedly siphoned off to middlemen, officials and some employees of the UAE consulate as commission. Swapna later told agencies that Sivasankar had asked her to keep his commission in her locker. Though Sivansankar denied this and said he was implicated by gold smugglers, Swapna raised serious allegations against both Raveendran and Sivasankar, saying both were party to all the deals and later they put the whole blame on her.
