The suicide case of Kannur Additional District Magistrate (ADM) Naveen Babu is getting murkier day by day with T.V. Prasanth, who complained to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan against the official’s “corruption”, being suspended from his job at the state-run Kannur Medical College hospital on Saturday.
It was after the ADM committed suicide that a report emerged that Prasanth had complained to CM Vijayan that it was only after he paid a bribe of Rs 98,500 to Babu that he got the final sanction of a petrol pump for which he had applied in Kannur. Prasanth is an electrician at the hospital. Based on a report from the Health Department, he was suspended from service for violating the rule that anyone working for the government cannot engage in business.
Incidentally, the purported reason Naveen Babu took the extreme step was that at a send-off function for him on October 14, following his transfer to his hometown, Pathanamthitta, ahead of his retirement a few months ahead, uninvited CPI-M leader P.P. Divya, who was also the Kannur district panchayat President, launched an attack on him in her speech.
Divya said that a person had approached her to speak to the ADM regarding sanctioning a petrol pump station, which the official had not been clearing despite several requests. “Just two days before, Babu gave the sanction. I know how the sanction was given, and I will reveal all the details in two days,” she said. A few days after the official committed suicide, sparking a massive uproar, the CPI-M asked Divya to quit. The police also registered a case against her and after that, she is on the run.
A court in Kannur has reserved its orders for Tuesday on her pre-arrest bail plea. It has also now surfaced that Prasanth and Divya’s husband are colleagues at the state-run medical college and hospital at Kannur. Questions have also been raised on how an ordinary electrician can set up a petrol pump. Meanwhile, Congress and the BJP are up in arms and claim that Prasanth’s complaint to Vijayan’s office is fake as his name and signature are not his. They have alleged that if a proper probe takes place, it will reach the office of CM Vijayan and the CPI-M headquarters.
–IANS
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