In a major setback to the UDF Government, the Kerala High Court on Tuesday asked whether a probe is not required on M K Kuruvila’s complaint in the solar scam to assess whether the cheating was done with the knowledge of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and his office. Justice V K Mohanan made this oral observation while considering a petition filed by Bangalore-based coffee planter M K Kuruvila seeking a Crime Branch inquiry on his complaint.
Kuruvila had filed the complaint before the solar scam surfaced. He had complained that two people, one of them claiming to be a relative of Chandy as well as member of his personal staff, defrauded him of over Rs 1 crore by offering to install a solar panel.
The State submitted that there is no direct evidence against Chandy in the case and Kuruvila’s version was wrong.
The court added that whether the Chief Minister knows or not can be ascertained only after an investigation and adjourned the case to August 8.
Kuruvila had filed a complaint before Chandy against a person called Binu C Nair who had introduced himself as a SCOSSA educational consultant and cheated of nearly Rs 1 crore.
According to the complaint, Binu approached Kuruvila for implementing solar power projects for industries and townships in Kerala with the help of Korean technology and UK funding. Binu had convinced Kuruvila that one Andrews of Puthuppalli, who is the first cousin of Chandy as well as a director of the educational consultants, will do all necessary arrangements for setting up the solar power project using his influence with the Chief Minister, Dinesh Rao, counsel for the petitioner, pointed out.
According to the complaint, Binu also introduced Diljith, director of SCOSSA who was also the private secretary of the Chief Minister. Kuruvila was assured that with their political connection they would get the project approved by the Central and state governments. After collecting more than Rs 1 crore from Kuruvilla, the directors of the company started avoiding him. Hence Kuruvilla filed a complaint before Chandy in October, 2012, who forwarded it to the DGP.
He said that the matter was not being investigated effectively by the police. After filing the petition, the police registered four criminal cases against Kuruvila in April, 2013.