The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the abetment of suicide of former Wayanad District Congress Committee (DCC) treasurer N M Vijayan and his son Jijesh submitted the charge sheet on Thursday.

Sulthan Bathery MLA I C Balakrishnan, former Wayanad DCC president N D Appachan, and former DCC treasurer K K Gopinathan have been named as the first, second, and third accused, respectively, in the charge sheet. The charge sheet was submitted by the SIT head and Sulthan Bathery Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP) K K Abdul Shereef before the Judicial First-Class Magistrate Court.

The team also collected complaints from several individuals, letters, and the suicide note of Vijayan in connection with the bribery-for-job scam linked to Congress-controlled cooperative banks in the district. Statements from around 100 witnesses have been recorded and included in the charge sheet.

The alleged financial irregularities were mentioned by Vijayan in his suicide note, which also referred to the role of Balakrishnan in certain financial transactions carried out during his tenure as DCC president. The charge sheet includes details of telephonic conversations between the late Vijayan and other accused leaders, as well as voice recordings of conversations between Vijayan and those who had allegedly paid bribes for bank jobs. The chargesheet also includes details from Vijayan's suicide note.

Meanwhile, the probe into the financial irregularities has been handed over to the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB), headed by DySP Shaji Varghese. The VACB recently registered a FIR and has sought permission from the Vigilance Director, as Balakrishnan is a sitting member of the state legislature.

Vijayan allegedly took the extreme step due to mounting debts after pledging his land documents to raise substantial funds to run the party's district-level operations. Recently, the Congress party settled an amount of ₹58.23 lakh to release the title documents of his land from the Sulthan Bathery Urban Cooperative Bank.

Vijayan and his son Jijesh were found in a critical condition at their residence in Manichira after consuming poison on December 24. They were initially admitted to a private hospital in Sulthan Bathery and later shifted to Kozhikode Government Medical College Hospital, where both succumbed on December 27.