Twists and turns of characters with apparently opaque motives seem to shape the high-profile police investigation into the alleged political conspiracy to denigrate Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and his family by ‘casting them under a cloud of suspicion’ in the 2020 UAE diplomatic baggage gold smuggling case.
On Thursday, a one-time woman speculator facing trial for large-scale financial fraud purportedly said under oath to a magistrate that she had evidence of a power cabal conspiring to defame the government. Later, she publicly alleged that the ‘clique of conspirators’ included a politician, journalist, and gold smuggling case accused.
Her statement appeared to echo the views of former Minister K.T. Jaleel, MLA, who had declared to the Cantonment police in early June that a toxic mix of political and business interests had spawned the plot to scandalise the political executive. Subsequently, the police formed a special team to probe the complaint. Dr. Jaleel had named Swapna Suresh, an accused in the gold smuggling case, and Kerala Janapaksham (Secular) leader P. C. George, ex-MLA, as respondents.
Chandy govt.’s tenure
Notably, the woman speculator is also the de-facto complainant in an alleged sex-for-political patronage racket during the tenure of the previous Oommen Chandy government. The previous Pinarayi Vijayan administration had dropped a political bomb by referring the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) during the 2021 Assembly elections. Subsequently, the CBI named a galaxy of Congress leaders, including Mr. Chandy, as suspects in the rape inquiry.
A Congress insider alleged that the petitioner was a cat’s paw of the government. He felt she intended to help the LDF turn the tide of the growing public resentment against the government by ‘baselessly suggesting’ a UDF-BJP plot to denigrate Mr. Vijayan. A CPI(M) insider denied the ‘insinuation’.
ED plea rejected
The petitioner's court appearance came on the day when an economic offences court in Kochi rejected an Enforcement Directorate (ED) plea to access Swapna's purportedly damning sworn statement. Swapna's allegation that Mr. Vijayan had used the UAE diplomatic channel for smuggling during the past administration had cast the LDF at the centre of a high-voltage political scandal. It also pushed Kerala into a season of acrimonious street protests spearheaded by the BJP and Congress.
