Thiruvananthapuram, Sep 1 (IANS) The latest Special Investigation Team (SIT) may have been announced only yesterday by the Kerala government, but the real story is not the decision to constitute yet another investigation team. It is the growing list of cases that the new UDF government has chosen to revisit and the striking speed with which SITs have become its preferred instrument of enquiry.
With the probe into the Kannur railway station episode involving former health minister Veena George, the number of high-profile SITs ordered since Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan assumed office in May, has reached four.
The first came almost with the arrival of the new government.
On May 18, within hours of taking oath, an SIT was announced to investigate the alleged 2023 assault on Youth Congress workers by the security personnel of then Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in Alappuzha.
That probe went on to produce a development few would have anticipated when it began, the suspension of senior police officer M.R. Ajith Kumar over allegations of interference in the investigation.
The second SIT emerged in July, when the Crime Branch took up alleged irregularities in Kerala PSC examinations.
The third arrived on August 31, with an SIT ordered to examine financial and other irregularities surrounding the proposed Lionel Messi and Argentina team’s visit to Kerala.
And then there is Kannur — perhaps the most politically intriguing of the four.
The episode occurred on February 25, barely two months before the Assembly elections.
KSU activists had staged a black-flag protest against the then Health Minister at Kannur railway station.
Five activists were arrested, and the police registered a case including attempt to murder, alleging that Veena George had been attacked with a weapon and suffered a serious injury to her neck.
The case, however, did not remain confined to the police file.
It became an election season political issue and subsequently a rich source of social media trolling.
The seriousness of the original allegation was repeatedly questioned, while Satheesan, then Leader of the Opposition, dismissed it as political drama and a deliberate lie, citing the absence of supporting CCTV evidence.
Then the election changed the political landscape.
Veena George lost, while the Left suffered a sweeping defeat.
Months later, the same episode has returned, this time through an investigation ordered by the government led by the man who had publicly questioned the original version of events.
The SIT now intends to go back to the beginning: Re-examine the CCTV footage, question police officers who were present at the railway station and those who investigated the case, and scrutinise how the serious charges were framed.
The statements of Veena George and her gunman will also be recorded.
The probe could, therefore, end up answering a question that has lingered since February: Was the original police case an accurate account of what happened at Kannur railway station, or did the charges go beyond what the evidence warranted?
For now, the government has put the past firmly back on the investigation table.
–IANS
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