KOCHI: The Enforcement Directorate had to analyse thousands of pages of content retrieved from the mobile phone of gold smuggling accused Swapna Suresh before nailing the evidence to arrest M Sivasankar, the former principal secretary to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
In fact, sources in the ED said the data retrieved from Swapna's iPhone ran into 18,000 pages and the analysis of the entire content was still on. The phone was seized by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) when it arrested Swapna from Bengaluru earlier this year and was retrieved by C-DAC, Thiruvananthapuram. The latter gave ED the content earlier this month as a PDF.
"There is a huge volume of content and it is very difficult to analyse each message, call detail and file. It takes several minutes to open the PDF file and while doing word searches, it takes the computer at least two minutes to complete the task. The analysis of the content is on," said a source.
Sources said two chats between Sivasankar and Swapna in 2018 and 2019 revealed that the bureaucrat had contacted a customs officer to clear diplomatic baggage. The one made in April 2019 is more suspicious, they said. There are WhatsApp calls amid the chat.
"Sivasankar claims ignorance as the chats are over a year old. Once the content from Sivasankar's phone is retrieved, we will confront him with more details," said an officer.
NIA had told the court that about 2,000 GB of data was recovered from the digital devices seized from Swapna and Sandeep Nair.
Customs sources, meanwhile, said the NIA and ED share information about the case on a daily basis. But the ED did not pass on Sivasankar's chat messages revealing that he had contacted a customs officer in April 2019.
"We came to know about it only after the ED served the arrest memo to Sivasankar, which was later substantiated in the affidavit filed before the Special Court for Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) cases. If they have information that the customs officer was contacted, then they should interrogate the officer as well. Similarly, they have not given the name of the officer, nor the details about the consignment and the date when it arrived. Our team communicated with ED on the day Sivasankar was arrested, but no such information was passed on to us," a customs source said.
The customs department claims that cargo clearance in Thiruvananthapuram is automated and directly monitored by its unit in Mumbai and no cargo can be cleared even by an assistant commissioner in Thiruvananthapuram.
"We expect them to pass on the information in this regard after interrogating Sivasankar. Hopefully, they will substantiate it in the report to be filed at the court on the expiry of Sivasankar's custody," the source said.
NIA sources said they too are analysing Swapna's WhatsApp chats.
While the NIA is focusing on terrorism and activities that threaten the economic stability of the nation, the ED is probing the money-laundering angle.