THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A former Chief Secretary under honeytrap. A senior bureaucrat being nicknamed as ‘stud bull’. Half a dozen civil service officers under the watch of intelligence agencies. There’s no dearth of backroom stories about Kerala’s bureaucrats. The Sriram Venkataraman episode has once again brought to light stories doing the rounds in administrative circles.
There was a time many IAS probationers were using their IAS tag as a dowry-extracting tool. Though such practices have now become obsolete with the passage of time, episodes of muck and sleaze related to a section of civil service officers have surfaced.
It was not so long ago a former Chief Secretary was allegedly honey-trapped while he was serving as the most powerful bureaucrat in the state. As per the audiotapes leaked then, the senior IAS officer had to pay a sum of Rs 5 crore after he was honey-trapped and blackmailed.
But it was just the tip of the iceberg according to insiders and the Sriram episode has once again turned the spotlight on the unholy lifestyle of certain senior bureaucrats. Sriram’s midnight rave party and subsequent rash driving with his female friend leading to the death of a scribe in the capital have grabbed national headlines. The news went viral due to the concerted attempt by top bureaucrats to hush-up the case and tamper with evidence.
Stud Bull
According to insiders, it was a senior bureaucrat nicknamed ‘stud bull’ who pulled strings for extricating the young and errant IAS officer from legal tangle by influencing the police. It was the same woman who allegedly helped a top IPS officer to arrest an accused in Saudi Arabia as well recently