A key witness in the bar licence renewal bribery case told an anti-corruption court here on Monday that he was willing to take a lie-detector test to corroborate his allegations of graft against Finance Minister K.M. Mani.
The witness, Ambili, is a driver and employee of the Kerala Bar Hotels Association (KBHA) working president Biju Ramesh, the complainant.
Investigators had earlier moved the court to give Mr. Ambili a lie-detector test. They wanted to detect deception, if any, in his statement that implicated Mr. Mani in the graft case.
Mr. Ambili had stated that he had chauffeured KBHA president Rajkumar Unni to Mr. Mani’s official residence in April 2014. The aim of the visit was to pay an instalment of the bribe, in this case Rs.50 lakh, Mr. Mani had allegedly demanded to favour the renewal of licences of 418 bars closed last fiscal year. Mr. Ambili stated that Mr. Mani himself had come to the portico to receive the “currency filled” suitcase.
Investigators said they would put Mr. Ambili through a pre-test interview where he would be told how the polygraph machine worked. They have prepared a detailed questionnaire, not more than 15 questions, based on a factual analysis of the case information.
Investigators would brief the polygraph examiner at the State Forensic Laboratory about the facts of the case. The examiner would alternate between relevant and irrelevant questions to gauge the subject’s responses, which would be electronically graphed in real time for subsequent analysis.
The law only accepted polygraph results as secondary or corroborative evidence in criminal cases.
However, investigators hope the test results would help them narrow down their field of inquiry.
