The Enforcement Directorate has approached the Supreme Court seeking transfer of the gold smuggling case registered by the agency to a court outside Kerala. ED Kochi Zone Assistant Director has petitioned the Supreme Court to move the case to a Bengaluru court. According to sources, the move is over fears that the state government may influence witnesses in the case. The case, which is being heard by a sessions court in Ernakulam, involves Swapna Suresh, PS Sarith, Sandeep Nair and M Sivasankar IAS, former principal secretary to the Kerala CM, as the accused.
On June 30, the Congress-led opposition demanded a CBI probe in the case a day after the prime accused Swapna Suresh alleged that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had lied in the Assembly. Leader of Opposition VD Satheesan told the media that the way Pinarayi had given the solar scam case to the CBI, he should assign the gold smuggling case also to the CBI.
Swapna had told the media that Chief Minister Pinarayi who initially refused to acknowledge her, later changed his stance and said that she had visited his official residence along with UAE diplomats. "Let me tell you, I have gone to his official residence several times with UAE officials and also alone. I was allowed to walk into his residence and his office in the Secretariat without any security issues. I challenge him to release the CCTV visuals between 2016 and 2020 of his official residence and office in the Secretariat," she alleged.
There have been instances in the past when the Supreme Court has transferred the case out of a state. In 1997, the Madras High Court had framed charges against Jayalalithaa in a disproportionate assets case. On February 8, 2003, with Jayalalithaa back at the helm as Chief Minister, the DMK appealed for the transfer of the case outside Tamil Nadu. On November 18, 2003, the top court moved the trial to a Special Court in Bengaluru, noting that a “fair trial was not going on” in Chennai.
Shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswathi was among six people charged with murder in 2004, after the manager of the Varadarajaperumal temple in Kancheepuram, Tamil Nadu, was killed within the temple premises on September 3. In 2005, the Supreme Court moved the trial from a Chengalpet court to Puducherry after Saraswathi pleaded that the accused would not get a free and fair trial in Tamil Nadu.
The Supreme Court on September 27, 2012, transferred the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case from Gujarat to Mumbai, in which Union Home Minister Amit Shah was an accused at that point, over fears that a free and fair trial was not possible in Gujarat.
On May 7, 2018, the Supreme Court transferred the trial of the gangrape and murder of a minor girl in Kathua out of Jammu and Kashmir, to the Pathankot District and Sessions Court in Punjab. While shifting the trial, the Supreme Court observed that “fear and fair trial are contradictory in terms and they cannot be allowed to co-exist”.