ED pressuring her to name CM Pinarayi, says audio clip purported to be of Swapna Suresh

Thiruvananthapuram: A voicemail said to be that of Swapna Suresh has come out in which serious allegations have been made against the Enforcement Directorate.

According to the audio message, the ED is forcing Swapna, one of the main accused in the sensational Thiruvananthapuram gold smuggling case, to give a statement against the Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. It said that she was not being allowed to read and verify the statement she has made.

While a probe was ordered by the prison department into the episode on Thursday, the ruling CPM said the alleged use of probe agencies "to target the chief minister" and the government was a very serious matter.

In the audio clip, it is said that the ED had promised to make her an approver if she named the chief minister in her statement. This was revealed by a private web portal on Wednesday night.

Union Minister of State V Muraleedharan and the state Congress slammed the Left front government, alleging it was a "political plot" to divert attention from corruption charges ahead of the local body elections next month.

In the clip, released by an online news portal on Wednesday, Suresh purportedly said that the investigation agencies allegedly tried to force her to take the name of Vijayan, which she refused to do.

She was also asked to sign documents regarding her statement without being permitted to read them, it was alleged.

Swapna is allowed to see some people, including her lawyer, and to make phone calls from the prison. According to the prison department, the voicemail could have been recorded during one such phone call.

The Customs, the National Investigation Agency and the Enforcement Directorate are conducting separate probes into the gold smuggling racket using diplomatic channel that was busted with the seizure of Rs 15 crore worth of the precious metal from a baggage of the UAE Consulate at Thiruvananthapuram airport on July 5.

Suresh, a former employee of the consulate, and several others have been arrested in connection with the case.

Following surfacing of the voice clip, Prisons DGP Rishiraj Singh ordered a probe directing South Zone DIG Ajaykumar to look into the matter and submit a report on Thursday itself.

"DIG south zone is probing the matter. The genuineness of the voice note will also be probed. We will seek the help of the cyber cell of Kerala police in the matter," Singh told reporters.

Shortly later, Ajaykumar visited the Attakulangara women prison here, where Suresh is lodged, and later told mediapersons that she had admitted the voice in the clip was hers. But, the recording was not made in the jail.

Muraleedharan alleged the voice clip was planted by the chief minister's office and it was a conspiracy ahead of the local body polls to derail the probe reaching Vijayan's office.

"Swapna Suresh is in jail. This is a move by the CMO to derail the probe reaching the CMO. This is a drama by the CPM. It doesn't have any importance," he told reporters here.

The probe agency has arrested only one person from the CM's office (an apparent reference to Vijayan's former principal secretary M Sivasankar) and a few others from Muvattupuzha and Malappuram.

The agencies were moving forward to bring the culprits to justice and to find the origin and the end user in the smuggling racket, he said, adding they will proceed based on the evidence available with them.

State Congress president Mullapally Ramachandran said the audio clip was an attempt by the state government to wriggle out of the various corruption charges being faced by it.

The court in Kochi, which had refused bail to Sivasankar, had expressed doubts at the veracity of the statement filed by the probe agency, a CPM statement claimed.

The suspended IAS officer, whose bail plea was turned down in an Enforcement Directorate case related to the money laundering charges in the gold smuggling case, had also submitted before the court that there was pressure on him to mention names of political leadership in his statement.

The ED had in a counter in the court denied the claim of Sivasankar as false, saying it had been made with malafide intention.

(With inputs from PTI)