On Wednesday, rivetting political drama unfolded before the public eye in Kerala.
It ensued barely 24 hours after the diplomatic gold smuggling case suspect, Swapna Suresh, triggered a public scandal by accusing Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan of an egregious breach of ministerial code for personal profit.
She had alleged that Mr. Vijayan had clandestinely sought the UAE Consulate’s covert help to smuggle out foreign currency and import brass vessels allegedly containing “contraband metal” via the mission’s diplomatic channel to dodge customs inspection.
As the controversy rippled across Kerala’s political landscape and triggered widespread belligerent street protests., plainclothes detectives descended on Swapna’s apartment in a high-rise in Palakkad. They whisked away her friend and co-accused P. Sarith to a nearby Vigilance facility.
The police later claimed that Sarith had willing accompanied officers investigating the LIFE Mission graft case. However, the duo alleged they were victims of a State-sponsored witch-hunt. They said the officers were keen to find out who had prompted Swapna to speak out against Mr. Vijayan.
(Swapna and Sarith are currently working for an organisation in Palakkad, which the DYFI has accused of being an RSS front.)
Case against P.C. George
In Thiruvananthapuram, former minister and Left Independent legislator K.T. Jaleel petitioned the police to investigate the “conspiracy” to malign Mr. Vijayan.
Mr. Jaleel alleged that a Congress-BJP axis had orchestrated the slander by rebroadcasting discredited allegations rejected by the electorate in the 2021 Assembly elections. He named BJP fellow-traveller P.C. George as a respondent in the complaint. Later, the police arraigned Mr. George and Swapna for allegedly conspiring to malign Mr. Vijayan and Mr. Jaleel. They also assigned a DySP to investigate the case.
An apparently unperturbed Mr. Vijayan maintained that anti-Left forces had merely reused a blunted instrument from their time-worn political toolkit to defame a successful and popular administration.
Support for CM
The CPI, the CPI(M), the LDF and the Kerala Congress (M) weighed in with support for Mr. Vijayan. CPI State secretary Kanam Rajendran said the Congress and the BJP had re-employed a failed strategy to capture lost political ground. The media had magnified their falsehoods, he said.
CPI(M) State secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan and LDF convener E.P. Jayarjan echoed a similar sentiment.
Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan, KPCC president K. Sudhakaran and BJP State president K. Surendran struck a starkly different position. The leaders said that Swapna’s averments were emblematic of the moral decay in the CPI(M) and demanded a comprehensive inquiry into the new revelations.
