Thiruvananthapuram: With Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala ordering a preliminary inquiry into the alleged bribe in the bar issue, the onus is now on the bar owners, who raised the allegation, to produce evidence. By ordering a Vigilance inquiry, the government could even pour cold water on the conspiracy for the time being.
According to highly-placed sources, the government decided to order a preliminary inquiry after ensuring that the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB) would not get sufficient evidence to initiate legal measures. Only if prima facie evidence for the allegations could be unearthed in the preliminary inquiry, the VACB will proceed further by registering a case with the government’s nod.
“Though bar owner Biju Ramesh had specified dates and venue of handing over a bribe of '1 crore to Finance Minister K.M. Mani, those statements could be considered only as circumstantial evidence. Unless sufficient prima facie evidence of amassment of wealth disproportionate to known sources of income could be proved, there won’t be even scope for registering a case,” said a senior police officer who had earlier served with the VACB.
The immediate relief for the government in ordering the probe is to defuse the controversies, even the demand for Mani's resignation, for the time being, until the preliminary enquiry is over. “It is better that the state government voluntarily ordered a preliminary probe before the matter was dragged to other forums,” sources point out.
Mr Ramesh Chennithala who ordered the probe had even wriggled out of a similar situation while he was Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee chief. The LDF government in 2007 ordered a probe into the allegation that Mr Chennithala took a bribe of Rs. 10 crore from Himalaya Chit fund.
But the Vigilance could not find any evidence. Even Mr K.M. Mani earlier had faced a Vigilance probe into a Rs.100-crore scam pertaining to Palazhi
Tyres promoted by him, which reached nowhere.
