Saritha heaps charges on MLA

An apparently combative Saritha S. Nair told presspersons here on Saturday that society would be dismayed if she narrated what she endured as a businesswoman at the hands of a set of politically influential persons with public standing.

Ms. Saritha, who is an accused in several investment fraud cases in Kerala and Tamil Nadu along with her now estranged partner, Biju Radhakrishnan, was at the Cantonment police station purportedly to lodge a complaint of sexual harassment against Congress legislator A.P. Abdullakutty.

The State police said Ms. Saritha was yet to lodge any written complaint against the MLA. They said she demanded that her complaint be kept confidential and she would come back another day for her statement to be recorded by a policewoman.

Accusations

Saritha seemed a far cry from her former reclusive self and was very confident and highly articulate during the impromptu media interaction. She accused the MLA of licentious behaviour, late-night obscene calls, and persistent demands to meet him at various hotels.

Saritha said she had met the MLA in good faith to promote her business and that he had turned her tormentor ever since. (Mr. Abdullakutty has denied her allegations).

Saritha described the former Forest Minister K.B. Ganesh Kumar, MLA, as a good friend who never misbehaved with her.

He had made grand promises to help her promote her business, but the assurances never materialised.

She stridently criticised the media for making false allegations that she had an illicit relationship with K.C. Venugopal, Union Minister of State for Power. She said she only remotely knew the Chief Minister, but that many of his political staff was her close friends.

On late-night calls

She explained her late-night calls to Ministers and politicians, stating that public persons were busy during daytime and most of them seemed free to talk “only after 10 p.m. or midnight.”

She said she saw nothing wrong in promoting her business, chiefly receiving cash advances from citizens on the promise of getting government subsidy for setting up solar panels at homes and on an industrial scale. She said Biju’s wayward financial dealings had wrecked her business and good name.

Saritha was currently put up in a rented house with her two children and mother at Vattiyurkavu.

Lawyer’s version

Curiously, her lawyer Feni Balakrishnan visited Biju at the Central Prison here where he was serving a life sentence for murdering his first wife. The lawyer’s version was that he had gone to see Biju to relinquish the brief he had given him.