Adding more circles of smoke to the controversies surrounding the CM’s office, the state unit of the BJP has alleged that a personal staff member of Oommen Chandy is attempting to sabotage the controversial e-mail snooping case.
According to BJP general secretary K Surendran a prominent employee in the (CMO) is trying to reinstate Biju Salim, a sub-inspector of police, who was suspended pending inquiry in the case.
“We know the person but his name would be revealed later. Biju Salim is a follower of Abdul Nassar Madhani, an accused in Bangalore blast case. Recently, he allied with Jamaat-e-Islami and its youth wing Solidarity Youth Movement,” said Surendran. Even after a year, there is no headway in the probe initiated by Crime Branch about the leakage of an internal document about 268 e-mails which were allegedly snooped upon by Kerala Police’s Intelligence wing. Biju, the first accused in the case, had allegedly forged a letter of the police intelligence wing, which sought e-mail account details of 268 persons, all of whom were Muslims.
So far, the special team of Crime Branch arrested three persons, Bjiu Salim, second accused P A Dasthakir, District Medical Officer (Homeo) and Shanavas, a lawyer based at Nemom, Thiruvananthapuram. All of them were later released on bail. Though the Crime Branch team, probing the alleged conspiracy behind the forging of the letter, had quizzed around 200 persons, but could not make a headway.
However, Radhakrishna Pillai, DySP with Economics and Offence Wing, CB, who is heading the probe, said that the investigation is progressing. “The Crime Branch team is looking for evidence regarding the involvement of the three accused in the crime,” he said. Asked about the delay in submitting chargesheet, the DySP maintained that the probe has not reached that stage.
The High Court had observed that the CB, probing the case did not make a sincere attempt to arrest the accused in the case. The comment was made while considering the bail plea of Dasthakir. He was charged with issuing a false medical certificate to Biju, which enabled the accused to avail of the leave immediately after he released the information to the publishing company. The case pertains to the article published by Madhyamam weekly in January 2012, that the intelligence wing of the police directed to get the e-mail account details of 268 persons, all belonging to Muslim community. Later, police found that the weekly had published a selective list of email IDs by omitting some which apparently belonged to non-Muslims. In an investigation initiated by CB it was revealed that Biju had released the distorted information to the weekly.