The National Investigation Agency was again granted custody of Kerala gold smuggling case prime accused Swapna Suresh for seven days.
Swapna was on Tuesday sent to the NIA's custody till Friday. Meanwhile, Sandeep Nair, another accused in the gold smuggling case was granted bail by the NIA court in Ernakulam.
The NIA is expected to check and counter-check all the statements of Swapna and compare them with the statements taken from state Minister KT Jaleel and also those of suspended IAS officer M Sivasankar, the former Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister.
In a related development, a team of NIA officials arrived at the state-run C-APT (Kerala State Centre for Advanced Printing & Training) office in the state capital on Tuesday and questioned a few staff members as it was this centre which was engaged in distributing copies of the Quran across the state.
Earlier, the Enforcement Directorate and the NIA had taken statements from Minister Jaleel. His name figured in the probe after he got packages of the Quran from the UAE to distribute in Kerala. Jaleel, who was Minister in-charge of the Waqf Board in Kerala, was involved in collecting Ramzan food kits donated by the UAE consulate, for which he had contacted Swapna Suresh.
Jaleel said he knew Swapna and had agreed to distribute copies of the Quran and the dates brought from the UAE after the Consulate officials asked him if he could help them.
Meanwhile, the Congress-led UDF and the BJP-led NDA staged protests across the state, demanding the resignation of the minister.
The Chief Minister has strongly defended his Cabinet colleague, stating that he has done no wrong and that there is no question of his resigning, amid protests by the Opposition demanding that Jaleel quit.
The gold import scam was busted after the Customs arrested PS Sarith, a former employee of the UAE Consulate on July 5, and since then, several others have been arrested including Swapna, who was also a former employee of the Consulate and later moved into an organisation attached to the state IT Department.
This job for her was facilitated by suspended top bureaucrat M Sivasankar.
With IANS inputs