THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The CBI has officially taken over the cases of sexual abuse filed by 'controversial' woman entrepreneur against six prominent politicians, including former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy. The FIR in this regard was filed before the Chief Judicial Magistrate Court here.
The woman, who was earlier arraigned in a slew of cheating cases, had levelled rape and sexual harassment complaint against Chandy, AICC general secretary K C Venugopal, Congress legislator A P Anil Kumar, Congress MPs Hibi Eden and Adoor Prakash and BJP national vice-president A P Abdullakutty. The sections pertaining to financial exploitation, corruption and harassment of woman have been levelled against the accused.
The case was first probed by the Crime Branch, which registered FIRs against the accused. However, prior to the Assembly polls, the state government on February 24 handed over the cases to the CBI. The Crime Branch had also given a report to the state government saying that they could not find any evidence to implicate Chandy in the case.
The UDF had alleged that the transfer of the case to the CBI was a politically-motivated move.
The Thiruvananthapuram unit of the CBI had also given an objection report to New Delhi recommending that the case should not be taken up owing to lack of evidence as well as concerns over the brevity of the complaint. However, the report was overlooked by the top bosses resulting in registration of the FIRs.