THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The vigilance team probing the disproportionate assets case against V S Sivakumar, MLA, submitted its preliminary report on its Thursday raids in a sealed envelope to the vigilance court on Saturday. Vigilance IG H Venkatesh refused to comment on the report, including on MLA’s denial to verify a bank’s locker in his wife’s name. “We can’t comment on the findings now. But we have included all the aspects we found during the raids. Now, the court will examine the report and come with a judgement, “ he told TNIE.
The Vigilance and Anti-corruption Bureau (VACB) had raided the residences of the MLA and his aides including friend Harikumar on Thursday. The raid took place at the MLA’s Sasthamangalam residence. Sivakumar had told reporters that the raid did not expose anything unusual. Earlier, Governor Arif Mohammed Khan had given the permission to prosecute the former minister after the state government sought his nod to go ahead with the case.
It was alleged that Sivakumar had amassed movable and immovable assets disproportionate to his known sources of income during his tenure as a health minister in the UDF regime. Soon after the permission was granted by the state government, Sivakumar said that the government was settling political scores. Sivakumar had said that the vigilance had earlier conducted a probe against the allegations and had found nothing incriminating against him. The new one is based on an anonymous complaint. The opposition Congress had charged that the new case was aimed at diverting the attention from the present issues especially the CAG report which indicted the government, pointing at gross irregularities in fund utilisation.