Gold smuggling by Kerala Government
Due to the coronavirus outbreak, many incidents in the country could not reach society in the way they were supposed to. One of them is gold smuggling by the Communist Government in Kerala !
This case has exposed the true nature of the Communist Government. A search at the Thiruvananthapuram airport in the first week of July revealed that gold worth Rs. 15 crore was being smuggled. From the names of those who are involved in the smuggling case, it creates doubts whether the smuggling is taking place at the Government level.
It has come to light that Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s Principal Secretary M Sivashankar is involved in this case. Apart from him, Swapna Suresh, Manager of the State’s Information and Technology Department, has also been implicated in the smuggling. Both have now been removed from the office.
Involvement of Government officials
Gold smuggling is not new to Kerala, especially to the Malappuram District. Gold is often smuggled into the State of Goa from the Gulf countries. From Goa, it goes to Malappuram District of Kerala. It involves many religious fanatics. This has been going on for many years now.
A question has been frequently raised whether despite such large-scale and sustained smuggling, why is the Government not taking concrete steps to curb it ? The answer to why the Government is not trying to stop gold smuggling lies in this case.
When revenue officials seized gold at the airport, Sareeth Kumar, who claimed to be an employee of Abu Dhabi Consulate had come to collect the parcel. In fact, he was working as a ‘Public Relations Officer’ at the Consulate a year ago. He is still committing such misdeeds in the name of the Consulate.
Now, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has arrested two religious fanatics from Malappuram in this case. During the investigation, the NIA found the body of a Police Officer (attached to the Consulate) with a severed head, near his house. The family of the Police officer said that they had been receiving threats from unknown people for the past few days. In short, this is not just a case of smuggling gold worth Rs. 15 crore, but it will expose many high-ranking people. The things are happening like a script of a film.
The amount of Rs. 15 crore is not huge amount from the viewpoint of smuggling. Still, given the background of the high-ranking officials involved, there is no doubt that these activities have been going on for quite a few years.
Swapna Suresh, a woman officer, also has a dubious background. She moved to Abu Dhabi in Dubai in 2016 after the Crime Branch launched an investigation into a fraud case. Surprisingly, despite the ongoing investigation, she became a secretary at the UAE Consulate. Earlier, she was interrogated for cheating a co-worker. She came to India last year after quitting her job in Abu Dhabi. She joined the Kerala Information Technology Department as a Manager. Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister M Sivashankar had recommended her for this appointment. Officers such as Shivshankar, Swapna Suresh, etc. hold important positions in the Government, transferred to various departments; all this raises questions throughout their tenure.
Strict punishment required
This shows how selfish, corrupt and treacherous is the real face of those who call themselves Communists. If such is the functioning of Government officials, the people will be exposed to how things are going on. The State of Kerala, which has been notorious for violent actions of the Communists, the anti-national and anti-Hindu activities of religious fanatics have now become notorious for corruption and crimes of the Government as well.
Appointments of the embassy officials are cleared by the Central Government. Most of the officials involved in the case are from various embassies. The BJP Government at the Center also needs to pay attention to what kind of people are being cleared while being appointed in such embassies. Now, some Government officers have been removed from office. They will be interrogated.
Even so, the way they have worked during all these years in Government service needs to be evaluated at all levels. Opposition parties have demanded that Pinarayi Vijayan take moral responsibility for the incident since his Principal Secretary was also involved in gold smuggling. If morality had been awakened by such demands, why would Vijayan have called himself a Communist ?
It is time for not only the Chief Minister but all the Ministers and administrative officials involved in such corruption to resign. The gold smuggling case may take its own time to come to a logical conclusion; the culprits will also be punished. The patriots demand that the Central Government take drastic steps to curb such a tendency.
The people have seen many cases of corruption and misconduct at the Government level so far. Communist Kerala has shown that a gang of such high-ranking officials has been working for smuggling in this manner.