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Compounding troubles for Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president K Sudhakaran, the state Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB) has started an inquiry into a complaint over the former state minister allegedly amassing wealth beyond his known sources of income.
As part of the probe, the VACB has sought details of income sources of his wife, who worked in a school teacher during the period concerned.
The development, based on a complaint filed in 2021 by his former driver, Prashanth Babu, comes days after Sudhakaran’s arrest in a separate case of alleged complicity in a cheating scandal involving conman Monson Mavunkal. He was released on bail in line with an interim bail order of the High Court.
A Lok Sabha MP from Kannur in Kerala, Sudhakaran told the media in New Delhi, where he has gone to visit senior party leaders, “They (VACB) have sought details about my wife’s accounts as part of the probe…. Let them probe. I have nothing to hide.”
In a notice dated June 15, the VACB’s Kozhikode unit has sought service particulars and salary details of Sudhakaran’s wife from authorities of the school where she was working. It has sought details such as net salary, including Pay/DA, leave surrender, and other details, for the period starting 2001.
According to a source in the Vigilance Bureau, accounts of Sudhakaran and his wife, as well as their sources of income, will be investigated. A preliminary probe has already been done into the complaint, the source added.
The probe is based on a complaint received two years ago, in which Prashanth Babu had alleged that the Congress leader had mobilised Rs 32 crore to enable a charitable trust formed in the memory of late party leader and former Kerala chief minister K Karunakaran to take over Chirakkal Rajas High School in Kannur, sources said.
Babu told the media in Kannur that VACB has asked him to appear before the investigating officer in Kozhikode to record his statement. “While serving as forest minister in the (state) government led by A K Antony (2001 to 2004), he (Sudhakaran) had indulged in corruption,” Babu alleged. “I had raised the issue then but there was no action (by the then government). He had also raised a large amount of funds in connection with the takeover of Rajas High School, which did not materialise.”
The controversy over allegedly mobilising funds for the Karunakaran trust had emerged in 2013 within the Congress, when the party-led UDF governed Kerala. A section of Congress leaders in Kannur, along with the CPI(M), had then sought a probe into the alleged fund collection on behalf of the trust, which wanted to set up an educational hub, besides taking over the high school. It was alleged that the funds, collected from the Gulf nations for the educational project, had gone missing.
Sudhakaran was chairman of the trust.
With the Congress not demanding a probe into the allegations of misappropriation of funds, the CPI(M) had demanded that the party should reveal all details. Sudhakaran was then a Lok Sabha MP from Kannur.
Babu lodged his complaint with VACB in June 2021, soon after Sudhakaran took over as KPCC president.
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