Thiruvananthapuram: Even as the judicial commission report on Solar scam blamed the Special Investigation Team which probed the solar cases for not probing into the nexus of Saritha S. Nair with political leaders and other prominent persons, members of the team said that it would have amounted to abuse of investigation powers to make all those who contacted con woman Saritha S. Nair suspects.
According to sources, call records of Saritha had shown that she had contacted many prominent persons umpteen times. It even included noted actors. Many of those were in connection with inauguration of various projects of Team Solar. Hence there was no point in quizzing all of them. “Any such move would be criticised as abuse of the investigation powers,” said a police officer privy to the case.
In the case of number of calls made to the then Chief Minister Oommen Chandy’s office and residence, his personal staff members who were accused in the case had admitted that they used the phone to contact Saritha. Moreover, in the judgment of one of the cases pertaining to the Solar scam it was clearly mentioned that the accused misused the connections with influential persons. This was because the investigation covered all those angles.
The G. Sivarajan commission’s adverse remarks on former State Police Chief T. P. Senkumar also raised many an eyebrow as the commission report did not contain any solid evidence to support the charges that he tried to sabotage the probe.
It was in the wake of allegations in the Assembly that Mr. Senkumar, who was then ADGP Intelligence, gave details of call records of some persons to then Chief Minister. While the probe was on, Mr. Senkumar was DGP Prisons and hence he could not interfere in the investigation.
Soruces also pointed out that Senkumar had taken open stand against the Commission for taking Biju Radhakrishnan to Coimbatore, for professional reasons.
It was also pointed out that even as the commission made adverse comments on Senkumar, no notice under the relevant section of the Commission of Inquiries Act was served to him.
As per norms a notice under Section 8B had to be served to a person to hear his version before making adverse comments against him.
