CPI(M) appoints Judicial Commission to whitewash misdeeds by Pinarayi Vijayan

THIRUVANANATHAPURAM (May 08 HS): The CPI(M), past masters in the game of covering up the misdeeds of their leaders, has come pout with a new strategy to portray Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly P Sreeramakrishnan and other party bigwigs as victims of a conspiracy hatched by the Centre.

The Kerala Government has constituted a “judicial commission” under the 1952 Act of Commission of Enquiry  to probe the role of central investigation agencies like the Enforcement Directorate, CBI, Customs and Revenue Intelligence which are probing various acts of commission and omission committed by the CPI(M) leaders in association with Swapna Suresh, Sarith and Sandeep Nair, the trio that headed gold smuggling and hawala operations through the Thiruvananthapuram Airport during 2016 to 2020.

The Judicial Commission  would be headed by V K Mohanan, a former judge of the Kerala High Court whose allegiance to the CPI(M) is well known among legal fraternity. Mohanan has been asked to probe into the kind of “misdeeds committed by the enforcement agencies” which under the guise of probing the gold smuggling went out of the way to discredit the Chif Minister and his sidekicks.

Mohanan has been given six months time to prepare a report giving clean chit to Vijayan and fellow comrades. This is the first time in the history of Independent India a State Government is appointing  a judicial commission to probe central agencies.

The decision to form the judicial commission with its own handpicked judge as chairman is a sequel to the Kerala High Court quashing the First Information Report  filed by the Crime Branch of Kerala Police in which unidentified ED and CBI officials were named as accused in the case in which the gold smuggling accused were reportedly forced and pressured by them to tell the court that chief minister Vijayan was the master brain behind the smuggling operations.