Kollam: The polling-day arson incident reported in the district seems to have taken a twist with the police busting an alleged Molotov cocktail attack drama, and arresting the president of the controversial US firm, EMCC Shiju M Varghese. Shiju was brought to Chathanoor Police Station in Kollam for questioning on Thursday.
Shiju, 49, of Ayyambilli House in Ernakulam, is also a candidate in the assembly polls. Besides him two others were also arrested. The case pertained to setting Varghese’s car ablaze at Kannanalloor early on April 6. Varghese then stated that an unidentified gang had waylaid him and torched his car.
The incident gained political significance since Varghese had entered the electoral battle against CPM leader and Fisheries Minister J Mercykutty Amma in the Kundara Assembly segment.
Vinu Kumar, 41, of Bhagyalayam at Vilavoorkkal, Malayinkeezh, in Thiruvananthapuram, and Varghese’s aide Sreekanth, 35, of Palakkad, were the two others who had been arrested.
Kumar is a relative and aide of Saritha S Nair, who was awarded six years’ rigorous imprisonment in the solar panel cheating case on Tuesday.
Police have kept another suspect, Krishna Kumar of Thiruvananthapuram, under surveillance since he has been undergoing treatment for COVID-19.
Varghese’s firm EMCC had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the State government for deep-sea fishing. The government cancelled the MoU after it had become a controversy before the Assembly polls.
The man plotted the attack on his own car to exact revenge for the loss caused to EMCC following the cancellation of the MoU. Mercykutty Amma’s statements, too, had provoked him to move against her, police said.
Varghese was arrested from his hideout at a forested area in the Karnataka-Goa border, while Sreekanth was picked up from Goa, police said. Vinu Kumar landed in the police net when he went to a magistrate court in Kozhikode, where Saritha Nair was produced.
Police said Kumar had lobbed the petrol bomb at the car.
