The Kerala High Court on Wednesday ordered the CJM court here to reopen the four-year-old case allegedly involving a factionist MLA of the Congress leaking fabricated documents of the state police intelligence to the media, to bring down a Congress minister in the party’s other factionist camp.

The case goes back to 2004, when the factionist war in the state Congress between the K Karunakaran and A K Antony camps was at its peak. A TV channel aired an ‘expose’ that said the DGP (Intelligence) has written to Antony, who was CM, that the Tourism Minister and Antony camp follower K V Thomas was involved in a Rs 336 crore hawala scam that was rocking the state. It soon turned out that the seemingly ‘official’ document that the channel displayed was a fine piece of forgery, and the TV correspondent was arrested. The crime branch claimed to have worked out the links through which the document was forged and fed to the TV channel, and made Congress MLA and K Karunakaran loyalist Shobhana George as the first accused.

The case dragged on after the Left Government assumed office. The Special Prosecutor in the case abruptly informed the CJM court a couple of months ago that the computer printer and other material evidence that the cops presented to the court in this case, were later found to have no connection to the forgery. The CJM court wasted no time to drop the case.

Soon, T P Nandakumar, who edits a local magazine, moved the CJM court seeking the case’s reopening, but his plea was turned down saying he had nothing to do with the case. The editor moved the HC, which noted a Supreme Court judgement that allowed any citizen to intervene in a criminal case, and ordered the CJM to reopen the case.

... contd.