AICC General Secretary and former Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has been given clean chit by the CBI in a sexual abuse petition filed by a woman accused in cheating cases.
CBI had earlier given a clean chit to several other Congress leaders, including AICC General Secretary K C Venugopal on similar allegations by the woman. In all the cases, the CBI concluded that there was no evidential support for the sexual abuse allegations levelled by the woman.
The complainant woman was accused in a series of cheating cases pertaining to a solar power project scam that rocked the state during the term of Oommen Chandy government from 2011 to 2016. She later levelled sexual abuse allegations against Chandy and other Congress leaders as well as a former Congress MLA Abdullakutty, who is now the BJP national Vice President.
The CPI(M) government led by Pinarayi Vijayan that succeeded the Chandy government in 2016 initially initiated a police probe against Chandy and others on the basis of recommendations of a judicial commission that probed into the solar scam. Later, the CPI(M) government sought a CBI probe on the basis of a request by the complainant. Chandy was accused of sexually abusing her at the Cliff House - the chief minister's official residence in August 2012.
According to sources, the CBI filed a report at a court in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday exonerating Chandy. The CBI said that there was no evidence to support the allegations of the complainant. Chandy was not present at Cliff House on the day of the alleged occurrence of crime. The CBI is also learnt to have cited contradictions in the statement of the woman.
Lok Sabha MPs Adoor Prakash and Hibi Eden and MLA A P Anil Kumar were the others who faced the allegations.
Chandy said in a social media post that he was never scared about the case as he firmly believed that truth will prevail. He also alleged that the Left Front government's decision to handover the probe to the CBI was also suspicious. Even as the CPI(M) often opposed a CBI probe in many cases, it referred the fake petitions against Congress leaders to the CBI without verifying even the basic facts, Chandy alleged.
Opposition leader V D Satheesan of the Congress demanded that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan tender an apology to Chandy over the issue.
The solar scam and allegations against Chandy and others were widely used by the Left Front in the Assembly election campaign in 2016.