The CBI has registered cases against the All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary K C Venugopal, former Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and three others for the alleged sexual exploitation of a woman entrepreneur accused in the 2013 solar scam case.
The probe agency has also lodged FIRs against Congress MPs Adoor Prakash, Hibi Eden and Congress MLA AP Anil Kumar. BJP national vice-president A P Abdullakutty is also an accused in one of the cases. The case against Abdullakutty was registered in 2014 when he was a Congress MLA from Kannur. He later joined the BJP.
The LDF government had handed over the case to the CBI in January this year. These cases were registered in 2016, 2018 and 2019.
The judicial commission which was probing the case before it was handed over the CBI, had recommended in 2017 that a sexual abuse be filed against Chandy, Venugopal and other Congress leaders. The woman had written a letter to the commission alleging that Chandy and other had sexually abused her and allowed her solar company to make illegal gains when the Congress was in power in Kerala.
After cases were lodged on orders of the CPM government, Chandy had moved the high court, which quashed the case against him and also restrained the media from debating contents of the letter written by the woman.
The woman then filed fresh complaints against the leaders and new cases were registered against them. She also approached Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, seeking a CBI probe into the cases.
When the Kerala government had recommended a CBI probe into the case, the Opposition Congress had dubbed the move as “politically motivated”, saying the CPIM-led government could not find anything against the party leaders and took the decision as elections were around the corner.