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Thiruvananthapuram: Two Kerala cadre IAS officers have been placed under suspension pending inquiry.
While industries director K Gopalakrishnan was suspended for creating religion-based WhatsApp groups, agriculture special secretary N Prasanth was placed under suspension for openly criticising additional chief secretary (finance) A Jayathilak.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Monday decided to place the two officers under suspension on the basis of a report of chief secretary Sarada Muraleedharan.
Though Gopalakrishnan maintained that his mobile phones were hacked and eleven WhatsApp groups were formed from his WhatsApp account without his knowledge, a preliminary inquiry of the police did not find any evidence of phone hacking.
It was suspected that he initially formed the group of Hindu officers and after it became controversial he formed the group of Muslim officers and some other groups. He later deleted all accounts and formatted his phones and sought police inquiry. There were unconfirmed reports that he was eyeing some posts in the Centre and the WhatsApp group of Hindu officers was formed to please BJP leaders.
Prasanth criticised and ridiculed his superior officer on social media as Jayathilak was initiating action against him for manipulating attendance by faking outside duties.