Pathanamthitta (Kerala), Oct 31 (IANS): The role played by Kannur District Collector Arun Vijayan in the controversial suicide of Additional District Magistrate Naveen Babu involving CPI-M leader P.P. Divya is coming under the scanner and on Thursday, the deceased official's wife hit out at him, saying that she has no trust in his statements.
Even though not invited, the CPI-M leader turned up at Naveen Babu's send-off function on October 14 and made some critical remarks. A hurt Babu committed suicide the very next day (October 15) and following the furore, Divya first resigned as Kannur district panchayat President and was on the run for several days after a case was filed against her on October 17. After her anticipatory bail plea was rejected, she surrendered before the police and was sent to a jail in Kannur on Thursday.
The Collector, in his statement to the police, has said that Babu confessed to him of "having done a wrong".
However, the deceased ADM's wife has refuted his version.
Manjusha, who is also a senior Revenue Department official, told the media that her husband and the Collector never had a warm relationship and "I don’t believe his words".
"It was I who informed the authorities that the Collector need not visit our house to pay his respects to my husband. The Collector never had warm relations with any of his junior staff. I am very sure that Babu will never ever share anything personal with him," she said.
"We will go to any extent in the legal way to get justice. I will never ever believe that my husband shared with him (the Collector) what is now being said. Any employee working under him will be saying the same - that he never ever had a warm relationship," Manjusha, who is the Tehasildar of Konni in Pathanamthitta, said.
Meanwhile, demands are coming from several quarters the Collector and the person who said he paid a bribe to Babu to get a sanction for his petrol pump, have also to be included as accused, apart from Divya.
State Congress President and Kannur Lok Sabha member K.Sudhakaran said with every passing day, "it is becoming clear that something is wrong somewhere in this case".
"We are also doing our bit to get to the bottom of the truth in the case and we will go till we reach the logical conclusion in this case. Who doesn’t know the ruling CPI-M-led Left government will go to any extent to save both Divya and the Collector?" he said.
Kannur district BJP president N. Haridas said that for a while his party had been saying that the role played by the Collector in this case is mysterious.
"The first statement from the Collector was giving a clean chit to Babu and then he repeated the same to the senior officer who conducted the departmental probe. But he made a somersault when he gave a totally different statement about the character of Babu to the police. This is a big racket and the role of State CPI-M Secretary M.V. Govindan’s son and the relation with the brother-in-law of Prasanth ( who applied for the petrol pump) has to be probed," Haridas said.
"The glaring omission from the Collector first surfaced when the inquest of Babu was done before the family members arrived and that’s now seen as a strange thing and is seen as something done for a coverup. A fresh post-mortem has to be thought about and we have been raising these things for a while. People have started to doubt if the present police probe will be enough," he added.
In her speech at the ADM's send-off function at the Kannur Collectorate, Divya alleged that Babu withheld a sanction for a petrol pump and gave the sanction just before his transfer orders came. Divya’s husband and petrol pump applicant Prasanth are colleagues at the state-run Kannur Medical College, while the brother-in-law of Prasanth and Govindan’s son are also close.
Meanwhile, in a related development, Union Minister of State for Tourism and Petroleum and Natural Gas Suresh Gopi said steps will be taken to ensure that all the sanctions given to start new petrol pumps in the state in the past one decade will be re-visited. Already, there were questions on how Prasanth, who works as an electrician, had the funds to start a new petrol pump.