Kannur: Police here on Friday issued summons to Swapna Suresh, the prime accused in the gold smuggling case, to appear for an interrogation on December 22 in the defamation case lodged by CPM Taliparamba area secretary K Santhosh.

The case was registered against her on the charge of hatching a conspiracy and levelling false allegations against Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, his family, and CPM state secretary M V Govindan through Facebook.

The police served the notice asking her to appear before Taliparamba DySP Vinod for interrogation after the High Court dismissed her petition seeking a directive to quiz her at any of the police stations in Kochi instead of a station in Kannur district. She approached the court, claiming that she was receiving threats from Kannur.

Dismissing her plea on Friday, the court asked her to move an appropriate complaint before the investigation officer if there was any such threat. The court also made it clear that the investigation officer should ensure that there is no physical threat to the petitioner.

The court had observed that the plea cannot be allowed because the petitioner is an accused in the case.

In this wake, the police served the notice to Swapna at her residence in Bengaluru. Though the police had issued a summons, she refused to appear before the investigation officer, citing the alleged threats from the district.

The incident about the case happened in March. In a Facebook live video, Swapa claimed that a middleman, Vijesh Pillai, acting on behalf of MV Govindan, had offered to pay her a total settlement amount of Rs 30 crore for handing over information on the chief minister, his family members, and the CM's additional private secretary, CM Raveendran.

In the complaint lodged against Swapna Suresh and Vijesh Pillai, the CEO of Action OTT platform in Bengaluru, CPM Taliparamba area secretary demanded action against the duo for running a dirty campaign against Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, his family, and Party Secretary M V Govindan. The complaint alleges that the incident is part of a larger conspiracy supported by anti-social elements for illegal gains.

According to the complaint, the objective of such allegations is to instil fear in the minds of the people and incite the opposition to riot against the government. Swapna constantly makes false and baseless allegations against the CM and other ministers. Several criminal cases have been registered against her. Such allegations made by Swapna on several occasions were used as a political weapon by the opposition, leading to large-scale protests and riots in the state, stated the complaint.

The complaint pointed out that Swapna's statements on Facebook Live are baseless, and no supporting evidence or audio has been released, it aimed to mislead people into thinking that M V Govindan, Swapna, and Vijesh were related.