Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Friday suspended his personal assistant Tenny Joppan and gunman Salim Raj over the telephone call controversy involving solar windmill fraudster Saritha S Nair.
This comes in the wake of an interim report by ADGP (Intelligence) T P Senkumar filed on Thursday night, which has traced a couple of outgoing calls from the CM’s Cliff House residence to Saritha’s mobile number.
A detailed inquiry will be conducted by ADGP (South Zone ) A Hemachandran, who is also in charge of the probe related to the frauds committed by Saritha, who is in judicial custody now.
Meanwhile, the Opposition upped the ante and called for the resignation of the Chief Minister and institution of a judicial probe.
It has come to light that Saritha had also tried to contact Ministers Aryadan Mohammed, K C Joseph and M K Muneer, indicating that she might have attempted to get in touch with Chandy himself who has no mobile phone. Chandy attends such calls through the handsets of his aides or any other person around.
A couple of incoming calls from Saritha’s cell phone to Jikkumon Jacob,another personal assistant to the Chief Minister, has also been traced, pointing to the fact that she had made deep inroads into the corridors of power.
Meanwhile, the Opposition LDF remained unrelenting and boycotted the Assembly proceedings, demanding a judicial probe.
Government Chief Whip P C George has also put Chandy in a fix by stating in a TV interview that he had warned the Chief Minister about Saritha.