State Police Chief K.S. Balasubramanian on Tuesday suspended, pending inquiry, Chief Minister’s gunman and long-time aide civil police officer Salim Rajan.
Phone misuse
Senior Home Department officials said Mr. Salim Rajan was suspended on the charge of abusing his official position, chiefly by misusing the landlines at the Chief Minister’s Office and his official residence, to communicate with Saritha S. Nair, an associate of the alleged financial fraudster Biju Radhakrishnan.
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Deputy Superintendent of Police K. Rafeeq, currently attached to the anti-piracy cell of the Crime Branch, will conduct the departmental inquiry. The police said that Saritha, an accused in several cheating cases in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, could have used the information passed on by the Chief Minister’s staff, inadvertently or otherwise, to impress her ‘victims’ of the clout she possessed at the highest level of government.
An investigator said the staff, who worked in close proximity with the Chief Minister, would inevitably know who his visitors were and for what purposes.
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Some of them held extended telephonic conversation with Saritha at a time when several complaints of cheating were piling up against the solar energy company she represented in courts, police stations, and even the Chief Minister’s and Home Minister’s offices.