THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Close on the heels of the Vigilance court rejecting the Vigilance report giving clean chit to former Finance minister KM Mani in connection with Bar bribe case, the bar hotelier and one of the petitioner of the case, Biju Ramesh has submitted a petition to Governor and Home Secretary requesting them to invoke Section 156(3) CrPC and to conduct further investigation against Mani.
Biju wrote to the Governor P Sathasivam and Home Secretary Subrata Biswas for the sanction of passing the order for further investigation. In the petition, Biju said the Governor can only sanction to order a further investigation as the respondent in the case was a former minister in the state. He pointed out in the petition that KM Mani was removed from the office through the intervention of the Governor.
Biju said in the petition that Mani had accepted money for renewing the bar license. He said that the enquiry commissioner and special judge had made observations regarding the lapses committed by the investigating officer to close the case and explained the timeline of the case in a nutshell in the petition.
Earlier, Biju Ramesh, the Thiruvananthapuram-based hotelier and businessman who opened the bar bribery scam in 2014, said that he was happy with the Vigilance court verdict. However, an order from Governor could only begin the proceedings of the case. The Vigilance court has discarded the report that gave the KC(M) supremo a clean chit in the bar bribery case. The court rebuffed the report filed by Vigilance SP K E Baiju of the Special Investigation Unit-I in March, which had been unable to find concrete evidence to prove that the former Finance Minister had accepted bribes to reopen around 400 bars that were closed by the UDF Government in 2014.
The background was that 418 bars were closed in the state on March 31 that year after the government decided not to renew the licences. In just over a year, Mani, under severe pressure, was forced to step down as Finance Minister. Biju had then trained his guns on the then Excise Minister K Babu who subsequently lost the elections.
Biju pointed out the UDF Government had replaced the special prosecutor with an officer who, he alleged, argued in Mani’s favour. In the 2016 Assembly elections, Biju Ramesh had contested on an AIADMK card in Thiruvananthapuram but ended up fourth with 5,762 votes.