Kerala Chief Minister's most trusted bureaucrat and Electronics and Information Technology Secretary M Sivasankar has once again found himself entangled in a major scandal.
Earlier, he was at the centre of a row over his role in roping in Sprinklr Inc. for analysing public data related to the COVID-19 outbreak. Now, Sivasankar is said to be shielding Swapna Suresh, considered one of the kingpins of the crime syndicate behind the smuggling of gold through the city airport by exploiting the cover of diplomatic immunity.
Swapna, a former employee of the UAE Consulate, is said to have forged Consulate documents to illicitly enjoy diplomatic immunity for gold smuggled from the Gulf.
It is now alleged that the IT secretary was behind her appointment as operations manager at the Space Park under the Kerala State IT Infrastructure Ltd (KSITI), which is under the IT Department. After the Customs identified Swapna's role in the smuggling racket, the IT Department has sacked her. Swapna is now absconding. The Customs officers raided her house in the capital for over two hours on Monday.
It is said that Swapna was given the plum posting in a highly sensitive project like Space Park ignoring a Crime Branch case against her, and also adverse remarks against her by the Intelligence wing. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan washed his hands off the issue saying Swapna's appointment was not with his knowledge.
The Chief Minister even said that he would look into how Swapna got picked for the post.
Both opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala and BJP state president K Surendran had alleged that the first calls made to the Customs office on behalf of Swapna were from the Chief Minister's Office. One of them, it was alleged, was from the IT secretary himself.
The Chief Minister, however, rejected the charge saying it was "nonsense" and added that no person with a dubious record could hope to function from the Chief Minister's office.
Nonetheless, in what seemed like a major goof-up, a tweet put out by Kerala Governor Arif Mohammad Khan had a picture showing Swapna walking along with the Chief Minister.
The tweet was immediately withdrawn, saying it was the wrong picture. The picture that should have been uploaded was that of the Governor addressing an Online Knowledge Series on July 5 but what got uploaded, apparently accidentally, was a picture of the Chief Minister with one of the main accused in a gold smuggling case.
Chennithala had also wanted to know whether the controversial auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) had any role in Swapna's appointment to a crucial post in the IT Department.
