THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Swapna Suresh, the key accused in the gold smuggling through diplomatic channel case, continued her tirade against M Sivasankar, former principal secretary to chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan and a co-accused in the case, on Saturday.
Speaking to various Malayalam news channels, Swapna Suresh said the assets in the joint bank locker she had held with Sivasankar’s chartered accountant were not her alone. In his memoirs published on Friday, Sivasankar claimed that he introduced Swapna to his chartered accountant Venugopal as she had sought help to open fixed deposits and keep a large amount of money she had earned.
He claimed he did not know anything about the joint locker operated by Swapna and Venugopal. Swapna disputed this claim and said she hadn’t needed any help to open an FD in a bank, and the joint locker was opened on Sivasankar’s advice.
“They wanted to operate the account even if I am away from the city,” she said. Swapna’s another revelation on Saturday was that her husband was an employee with K-FON, a pet project of Sivasankar, for a short period.
Husband worked as K-Fon logistics manager: Swapna
Swapna Suresh told a channel that her husband Jayasankar had worked as logistics manager of K-FON for four or five months, and when the case came up, he was directed to quit. She also claimed that Sivasankar had helped her, Sandeep, and Jayasankar to go in hiding at Bengaluru. Explaining that their effort was to keep away from Kerala till the anticipatory bail application is decided, she said she had talked to Sivasankar over the phone twice during the journey to Bengaluru via Kochi.
Recalling her interrogation by various agencies, Swapna said ED had never put her under pressure. Regarding a leaked voice clip of Swapna in which she claimed there was pressure to name CM, Swapna said she had been directed to say so. M Sivasankar, whose memoirs ‘Aswathamavu verum Oru Ana’, reignited the gold smuggling case controversy, refused to talk to media on Swapna’s allegations.
It was Sivasankar’s statements in the book that he was unaware of Swapna’s illegal activities that prompted her to speak to media and level serious allegations against the IAS officer who is currently placed as principal secretary of the Sports and Youth Affairs department. Sivasankar, who is highly critical of the method of interrogation followed by ED and Customs, also alleges in the book that customs officials even tried to blackmail his family members to extract statements as per their wish.
He said Customs officials had summoned his wife and nephew and told them indirectly that the details of his WhatsApp chat in sealed cover would be leaked and that would create trouble for his son whose marriage was being arranged at that time.
“They came to know about the family of the bride-to-be from my recovered chats. Malu (Sivasankar’s wife) told them that Sivasankar would do no wrong. The ordeal that Malu had to face that day shocked me. It was an episode that proved the officials would stoop to any low to abide by the orders of senior officials who have political interests,” he writes.