Kannur, Oct 21 (IANS): The hearing on the anticipatory bail plea of CPI(M) leader P.P. Divya whose curt remarks led to the suicide of Kannur Additional District Magistrate (ADM) Naveen Babu, was on Monday deferred till Thursday by a local court.
Divya has been missing from the public glare since last week after the ADM's death.
A week after Babu was found hanging in his official residence, Divya who held the post of the Kannur district panchayat president quit due to the tremendous pressure from several quarters. Kannur has been witnessing protests by the Congress and the BJP every day.
Divya attended Babu’s send-off reception held here on October 14 evening even though she was not invited to the function.
At the function, Divya alleged that a person's application for a petrol pump station was delayed and she knew how Babu gave the sanction later, which she would reveal in two days.
Babu, who has been widely appreciated for his clean official life and was to retire in seven months, felt deeply humiliated by her remarks and took an extreme step.
Following this tragic incident, the person who applied for the petrol pump station was identified as T.P. Prasanth, who works as an electrician in the state-run Medical College at Kannur and was a colleague and friend of Divya’s husband.
Eyebrows were raised on how an electrician could afford to open a petrol pump station and more importantly, a person working in a government organisation cannot engage in a private business.
Trouble broke out when the probing media came out with a glaring omission on the part of Prasanth as it surfaced that in the lease rental agreement, the signatory is shown as Prasanth, while in the complaint letter to the Chief Minister which stated that Babu had taken a bribe of Rs 98,500 from him, it’s written as T.V. Prasanthan and the signatures in the two documents were also different.
State Health Minister Veena George who hails from the same district as that of Babu, on Monday gave a clean chit to him and said he is personally known to her and had worked together and was an officer with impeccable integrity.
“Prasanth is not a permanent employee and he will no longer be in service,” said George.
Meanwhile, at the controversial function where Divya used curt remarks against the ADM, Kannur District Collector Arun K. Vijayan, who had presided over, invited ire from several quarters after it surfaced that he had invited Divya. He, however, has denied such a thing.
According to reports, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan summoned him to know what happened and he was in tears explaining his innocence.
The ruling CPI(M) has been caught in a bind with three by-elections scheduled for November 13 as both the Congress and the BJP have taken this as a big campaign issue.