Thiruvananthapuram :Except for false testimonies by dubious culprits of gold and dollar smuggling cases, the central agencies have nothing at all in their findings against former IT Secretary M Sivasankar. The trial court in Kochi for economic offences too has not mentioned any agency finding while allowing Sivasankar his bail in Customs case.
Culprits KT Rameez and Swapna Suresh had sought investigation over claims they made. It is probably because Customs is done with their probe on Sivasankar’s alleged involvement that is not seeking further custody of him, read the verdict. All there is to the case against Sivasankar is a bunch of curious testimonies by culprits, whom the agencies had vied to grant leniency.
Trappe Over Friendship With Swapna
Sivasankar was trapped when investigative agencies trailed the friendship he shared with Swapna Suresh. Together, the Customs, NIA and Enforcement Directorate(ED) interrogated Sivasankar to more than 100 hours. Though he had plead for bail in anticipation, the High Court had dismissed it and Sivasankar came to be arrested by ED from a private hospital in Thiruvananthapuram on 28th of October.
In fact, ED never ever found evidence of black money all through their probe and incurred scathing criticism from the court on that count after which, it granted Sivasankar bail over their case on 25th of last month. Similar was the story with Customs too and the court for economic offences in Kochi allowed bail in the gold smuggling case mounted on Sivasankar on the same day.
There were rumours on secret SIM card used to conduct gold smuggling. However, they remained just rumours with no kind of evidence forthcoming to substantiate that claim.. The bail in gold smuggling case came when Customs failed to file chargesheet in the stipulated 60-days time. Customs then proceeded to arraign Sivasankar as 4th accused in its dollar smuggling case and obtained a warrant. The bail on Wednesday was granted against this. Incidentally, Sivasankar is not an accused in the cases being investigated by the NIA.
