Thiruvananthapuram, Dec 9 (IANS): Finally, ending all sorts of aspersions cast against him by the Congress and the BJP leaders, the office of Kerala Assembly Speaker P.Sreeramakrishnan in a statement issued here on Wednesday clarified that he has not travelled with any of the accused in the gold smuggling case at all or had any chance to have met any of them while being abroad.

Ever since the media came out with the news that the High Court was shocked to hear the list of names of 'big sharks' as given by the national probe agencies, who were close with the accused in the gold smuggling case, it was State BJP president K.Surendran who first broke the news that one of them was Sreeramakrishnan.

And since then allegations came thick and fast and the name of Sreeramakrishnan surfaced again and again in the rumours that even mentioned that he had travelled with the accused to the Middle East not once, but many times and it was this which forced his office to come out with the statement.

"Not even once was any travel made with the accused in the gold smuggling case , nor was there any meeting with them while I travelled abroad. Do not know from where this false news surfaced and after it came, everyone went with it . It was wrong to have drawn the Constitutional post into this," said the statement.

" There is an attempt to create a smokescreen on the foreign trips made, which had all the necessary clearances from the appropriate authority. All the allegations that have come out are baseless and it has no truth in it," read the statement.

The case surfaced on July 5 with the arrest here of P.R. Sarith -- former UAE Consulate employee, and then came the arrest of another former embassy staffer Swapna Suresh, who afterwards worked in the IT Department's Space Park and also closely associated with Vijayan's top aide.

Incidentally, soon after the case surfaced, a video of Sreeramakrishnan while taking part in an inauguration of a new business venture and after finishing the inauguration, he is seen tapping the shoulder of Swapna and this had raised eyebrows.

At that time Sreeramakrishnan had said it was a mistake on his part to have attended that function.