Trying to cope with this newspaper’s expose of the multi-crore rupee petrol pump scam in Kerala while the NDA ruled, the state BJP today went into an overdrive trying to disown the report of its own high-level probe committee that contained testimonies of its own senior leaders talking about the scam.

The probe committee, headed by its state vice president Mohan Shanker and with another vice president Manjeri Narayanan and former state DGP G.P.C. Nair as members, had been originally deputed to probe the strife-torn party’s debacle in a 2005 Lok Sabha bypoll. But its senior leaders who deposed before it highlighted how the party made money from the scam, down to details such as even the official bribe rates for party workers and others to get petrol pumps allotted.

State BJP president today issued a press statement that said the scam’s expose was based on forged documents, and that the probe report had made no mention of any petrol pump scam.

This was after the same BJP leader was quoted saying yesterday: “This is an internal issue of our party, and even our state committee has yet to view and discuss the probe report. Besides, the report has only passing references (about the petrol pump scam). Where is the evidence to substantiate those? I don’t want to comment any more.’’

Senior BJP leader and former state president K. Raman Pillai, who had told the committee that the party made Rs 18 crore and detailed the bribe rates, had an altogether different version, though he did not say the probe report that this newspaper quoted was forged: “The probe report quoted was the draft version. The final version will be made later,’’ he said.

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