A court in Kerala’s Kannur adjourned the October 29 hearing on CPI-M leader P P Divya’s pre-arrest bail plea in Kannur Additional District Magistrate Naveen Babu’s suicide case after a preliminary hearing.
Divya’s counsel argued that she had no malicious intentions when she spoke about Babu and was just making a general statement against corruption.
Meanwhile, the prosecution has vehemently opposed her bail plea.
The counsel of Babu’s wife said that it has now become clear that the so-called complaint by Prasanthan to the Chief Minister was made after the suicide, and moreover, today, they have not produced that complaint but came out with another complaint from a person named Gangadharan against Babu.
“There is no problem to arrest Divya. The entire episode of Divya was pre-planned,” said the counsel of Babu’s wife.
Babu, who has been widely appreciated for his clean official life and was to retire in seven months, felt deeply humiliated by her remarks and took an extreme step.
On October 13, Naveen Babu was found hanging in his home while his wife was waiting for him at the Chengannur railway station. He was recently transferred to his home district, Pathanamthitta.
Locals said that Babu was deeply hurt when Divya, the Kannur district panchayath president, made serious corruption charges against him at his send-off function on Monday. Divya had not been invited to the function and had barged in.
Divya said that a person approached her to speak to Babu about the sanctioning of a petrol pump station despite several requests, which he (Babu) had not been giving.
“Just two days before his retirement, Babu gave the sanction. I know how the sanction was given, and I will reveal all the details in two days,” she said.
Following the tragic incident, the person who applied for the petrol pump station was identified as T.P. Prasanth, an electrician at the state-run Medical College at Kannur and a colleague and friend of Divya’s husband.
Eyebrows were raised on how an electrician could afford to open a petrol pump station and more importantly, a person working in a government organisation cannot engage in a private business.
Trouble broke out when the probing media revealed a glaring omission on the part of Prasanth. It surfaced that in the lease rental agreement, the signatory is shown as Prasanth, while in the complaint letter to the Chief Minister, which stated that Babu had taken a bribe of Rs 98,500 from him, it’s written as T.V. Prasanthan. The signatures in the two documents were also different.
On Wednesday, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan broke his silence and assured that no one would be protected and that strong action would be taken against wrongdoers.
–IANS
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