The State Police Chief will issue proceedings on Wednesday constituting a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the findings submitted by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on alleged bribery and hawala transactions involving former Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, his daughter T Veena, and MLA P A Mohammed Riyas.

A team under Crime Branch ADGP H Venkatesh will do a preliminary inquiry. DGP Ravada Chandrasekhar told Onmanorama that officers will be selected and designated for the Crime Branch investigation and that he has been directed to issue the proceedings on Wednesday. The Advocate General is learnt to have given green signal for the investigation under the Prevention of Corruption Act and Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

With the Crime Branch taking up the investigation, it is now clear that the preliminary probe will mainly focus on alleged hawala transactions. Selected portions of the 25-page ED report have surfaced which showed Pinarayi allegedly taking bribe of ₹3.28 crore from the CMRL through Veena's defunct company.

The Vigilance and Anti-Corruption bureau (VACB) has not received instructions on doing a quick verification on these findings. Sources have confirmed that the legal opinion was clear on corruption angle and validity of case. Ideally, this would have necessitated an order from the Home department for a quick verification followed by a vigilance inquiry. Instead, the government directly forwarded the file to the DGP for a Crime Branch investigation.

The ED report relied on jottings from what it termed as 'red book' owned by Veena which indicated that a substantial sum has been routed abroad allegedly by Mohammed Riyas.

Sources said that the state government is strictly following the legal opinion which has quoted from two major verdicts issued by the Supreme Court on registration of FIR and sharing of the Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) with the accused.

The Congress-led state government has so far not shown any haste in registering an FIR against Pinarayi Vijayan despite mounting pressure from the ED. Even after receiving a legal opinion, it has opted for a comprehensive preliminary probe by Crime Branch mainly considering some of the key observations of the Supreme Court in the Lalita Kumari vs Government of UP case.

The SC held that registration of FIR is mandatory under Section 154 of CrPC, if the information discloses commission of a cognisable offence and no preliminary inquiry is permissible in such a situation. If the information received does not disclose a cognisable offence but indicates the necessity for an inquiry, a preliminary probe may be conducted to ascertain whether the cognisable offence is disclosed or not.

With the state government going for a preliminary inquiry based on the information received from the ED, it could mean that the state government has not got information sufficient enough to disclose a cognisable offence and now it is left for the Crime Branch to establish the offence and then file an FIR. In the cabinet briefing held after the ED submitted the report, Chief Minister V D Satheesan gave ample hints that there were much graver allegations in the report than just receiving bribe. While a 25-page report was submitted by the ED, selective leak of certain pages containing scribblings from Veena's diary and list of people who allegedly received bribe has given ammunition to the CPM to call it a politically motivated ploy to tarnish Pinarayi Vijayan.

While delivering the verdict in Lalita Kumari case, the apex court recalled its observations in the 1972 Thulia Kali vs State of Tamil Nadu case. It said that delay in lodging the FIR quite often results in embellishment which is a creature of afterthought. On account of delay, the report not only gets bereft of the advantage of spontaneity, danger creeps in of the introduction of coloured version, exaggerated account or concocted story as a result of deliberation and consultation. The SC had held that it is essential that the delay in lodging of the FIR should be satisfactorily explained.

This SC order also puts onus on the Home Department to clearly justify the need for an in-depth probe by the Crime Branch before registering an FIR. The CPM has collectively rallied behind Pinarayi Vijayan to trash ED's findings. In view of the SC orders which were quoted by Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala on Tuesday before directing the DGP to initiate a probe, the Crime Branch can't take too long in establishing the offence and registering an FIR or else the Congress will have to face huge political setback.