Thiruvananthapuram: A day after the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government in Kerala ordered the withdrawal of a three-year-old criminal case against a minister and five leaders for creating a ruckus in the legislative assembly, a government pleader told a court that the case was still alive.
The volte-face came after a public outcry and stiff resistance from the opposition, who slammed the move to exonerate the CPM and CPI leaders whose antics were telecast live on television on March 13, 2015. The accused, all members of the opposition benches at the time of the incident, were trying to prevent the then finance minister K M Mani from presenting the state budget.
On Wednesday, The chief judicial magistrate in Thiruvananthapuram asked the accused to be present before the court on April 21. The court refused to admit a plea from opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala in view of the government pleader’s clarification.
The government withdrew the case on Tuesday after M Sivan Kutty, one of the accused, wrote to chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan. Ironically, the order came on a day when speaker P Sreeramakrishnan chided the opposition members of disrupting house proceedings during their agitation for a CBI probe into the murder of Shuhaib, a Congress activist.
Apart from Sivan Kutty and local self government minister K T Jaleel, cases have been registered against E P Jayarajan, K Kunju Ahamed, C K Sadasivan and K Ajith. Five of them were suspended from the House. The city police eventually handed over the case to the crime branch.
In November, the High Court of Kerala had ordered the government to fast-track investigation into the case as early as possible. The six legislators are accused of destructing public property worth about Rs 2 lakh. They were seen jumping on to the podium, throwing down the chair and lobbing microphones and other equipment.
The LDF had vowed to block Mani from presenting the budget since the finance minister was accused of receiving massive bribes from bar owners.