CMRL-Exalogic case: CPI(M) accuses UDF of aiding ‘BJP-controlled ED’, withholding facts to ‘mislead’ Kerala HC

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Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] on Friday blamed the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) in Keralam for “aiding the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-controlled Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) political agenda by wilfully withholding the full facts of the CMRL-Exalogic case” from the Kerala High Court, resulting in the Single Bench’s order to register an FIR against former Chief Minister and current Leader of the Opposition Pinarayi Vijayan, his daughter T. Veena and former Minister P.A. Mohamed Riyas under the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1985.

CPI(M) leader and former MLA M.V. Jayarajan told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram that the State had “kept the court in the dark” that the ED had extorted “false” statements from CMRL officials to falsely implicate Mr Vijayan and his family in the case.

He stated that the CMRL officials had filed affidavits, retracting their statements, which they alleged the ED had obtained by putting them and their families “under intense physical and mental duress.”

Mr Jayarajan said the State did not argue that the hasty registration of an FIR against any person, based on a politically motivated public interest litigation and without hearing the respondent, amounted to “a denial of justice.”

Moreover, Mr Jayarajan said the State deliberately failed, allegedly at the behest of the current UDF dispensation, to make the legal point that the ED did not present its case for an anti-corruption FIR against Mr Vijayan in the High Court and had instead chosen to achieve the BJP’s political aim to ensnare CPI(M) leaders in false cases by “piggybacking on a PIL filed by a private litigant.”

Moreover, he accused the State of not presenting earlier High Court and Supreme Court judgments rejecting Congress and BJP leaders’ plea to register an anti-corruption case against Mr Vijayan in the CMRL-Exalogic controversy.

Mr Jayarajan noted a “striking dichotomy” between the Congress’s national line against the BJP-led Central government’s “subversion of central agencies to politically target opposition leaders and the party’s tacit support” for ED cases against CPI(M) leaders in Keralam.

“The Congress government in Keralam has meekly acquiesced to the ED’s persistent efforts to target Mr Vijayan. It ordered a Crime Branch inquiry based on a report riddled with trumped-up charges sent by the ED to the State Police Chief, inadvertently betraying the Congress in Keralam’s drift to the BJP’s pro-Sangh Parivar line. In stark contrast, the non-BJP governments in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Punjab had thrown out similar demands by the ED to implicate anti-Sangh Parivar leaders in false cases”, Mr Jayarajan said.

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