A senior Customs official who was in charge of investigating the Kerala gold smuggling case was recently transferred to a 'less important' post after statements of Swapna Suresh, one of the key accused in the case, was 'leaked'. Assistant Commissioner NS Dev was transferred to a post in the legal department on Saturday, reports Telegraph India. However, no reason was given for the transfer.
Dev was at the helm of probing the case which began with the seizure of 30 kg of gold from the Thiruvananthapuram airport in the first week of July. The case had in the weeks that passed become a political controversy with links emerging between Swapna and the former principal secretary to the Kerala Chief Minister, M Sivasankar. He had since been suspended.
However, the recent statement that leaked concerned Anil Nambiar, coordinating editor of the Malayalam news channel Janam TV, which has been supportive of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In her statement, Swapna alleged that Nambiar had sought the support of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Consulate for the BJP. Swapna had been an employee of the UAE Consulate. Asked about Nambiar’s arrest, BJP state president K Surendran claimed that Janam TV was not a BJP channel.
The Customs Department had an internal enquiry after media reports of the leaked document. Dev, who was head of the Customs Commissionerate (preventive) in Kochi had recorded Swapna's statement. But several officials have been handling the case and it is not clear how Swapna's statement was leaked.
Earlier, another Customs official - Joint Commissioner Aneesh Rajan, who was also in the probe team for the case, was transferred to Nagpur from Thiruvananthapuram. Aneesh had said that the Customs didn't receive any calls, when repeatedly asked by the media about an alleged call from the CM's office on the day the gold was seized.