Congress’s Raju P. Nair alleges blackmail bid behind Anto Augustine’s revelations on Keralam CM’s ‘marriage papers’
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Congress leader Raju P. Nair on Saturday said that he suspected a conspiracy to destabilise the V.D. Satheesan-led Keralam government behind the allegations that the Chief Minister had entered into a second marriage while his existing marriage was subsisting.
Mr. Nair, a Congress spokesperson, said he had conveyed his doubts to the Kalamassery police probing a complaint filed by him seeking a probe into the alleged conspiracy.
He was speaking to the media after appearing before the police to record his statement in the case registered against Reporter TV managing director Anto Augustine and two identifiable persons.
Mr. Nair said he was suspicious of the context in which Mr. Augustine made the revelation that two people had approached him with documents of Mr. Satheesan’s second marriage, which were later found to be fabricated by his team of journalists.
“Mr. Augustine made the revelation even as an SIT is probing the corruption allegations over the failed bid to bring the Lionel Messi-led Argentina to Kochi. He says he was convinced that the documents presented to him were forged. If so, he should have reported the matter to the police. I doubt if he made all the revelations as a defence against the probe and was attempting to blackmail the government,” Mr. Nair said.
He said it needs to be investigated if the people Mr. Augustine mentioned in his revelation were for real or not. “I have deposed before the police that I doubt if the incident in the revelation really happened or if the whole story was fabricated as part of a pressure tactic. It has to be probed which force was behind the suspected conspiracy,” he said.
The FIR registered by the Cybercrime Police, Thiruvananthapuram city, recently based on Mr. Nair’s complaint was then handed over to the Kalamassery police, considering that the alleged place of occurrence of the incident mentioned by Mr. Augustine was Kalamassery.
The FIR invokes Sections 336(4) (forgery intended to harm reputation), 337 (forgery of a public record or register), 61(2) (criminal conspiracy), 356(3) (defamation), 340(2) (using a forged document as genuine) and 339 (possession of a forged public document, knowing it to be forged) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023.
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