Kerala Speaker Denies BJP’s Charge of Providing Assistance to Accused

Kerala Assembly Speaker P Sreeramakrishnan on Wednesday dismissed as baseless, the charge of the BJP state chief that he had provided ‘assistance’ to the accused in the gold smuggling case. “The assumptions made in media reports are not right.

The reports that have been going round since the last two days are completely baseless and unbelievable,” the Speaker’s office said in a statement. BJP state chief K Surendran had on Tuesday alleged that the Speaker and a few ministers in the LDF government had provided assistance to the accused.

He had termed as a ‘mystery,’ the foreign trips of the Speaker. “as he has close links with those arrested in the case.” The Speaker’s office on Wednesday said details of all official and unofficial trips abroad are on the Facebook page and if needed, further details could be got from them. “A few official trips and few trips to the family members settled abroad were essential.

Currently, there is an effort to create a smokescreen regarding the trips made by the Speaker. All the embassies concerned were informed of the trips.

The Speaker neither travelled with any of the accused in the gold smuggling case nor met them abroad,” the statement said. The Speaker also said that the media was unnecessarily raking up ‘fake news’.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA), Enforcement Directorate and Customs are conducting separate probes into the racket that was busted with the seizure of gold. On November 24, the Customs had arrested M Sivasankar, former Principal Secretary to the Kerala Chief Minister in connection with the gold smuggling case.

The Customs has arrested around 15 people, including Swapna Suresh, Sarith PS and Sandeep Nair, over seizure of 30 kg gold from a diplomatic baggage of the UAE consulate in Thiruvananthapuram on July 5. Sivasankar was suspended after his links to Suresh, a former employee of the Consulate, surfaced.