The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected petitions filed by three accused viz. Jiji Thomson, PJ Thomas and TH Mustafa seeking dismissal of the palmolein case.

The court criticised the state government by saying that the advocate representing it had misled the court. The court also observed that that at this time no one should be acquitted, as these scams should not recur and said that prosecution in the case should continue.

Jiji Thomson, present chief secretary; PJ Thomas, former Kerala IAS officer; and TH Mustafa, then food minister are among eight accused in the case.

In March, the Kerala High Court had rejected Jiji Thomson's plea seeking to stop all further proceedings in the case against him until the Supreme Court disposes Special Leave Petition (SLP). Earlier, his plea seeking dismissal of the case was rejected by both the lower court and high court.

The Palmolein case relates to the import of 15,000 tonnes of palmolein oil from a Malaysian company in 1991 when the late K. Karunakaran was chief minister. The import had allegedly resulted in a loss of     Rs 2.32 crore for the state.

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