The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday, April 9, moved the Supreme Court challenging the Karnataka High Court order granting bail to Bineesh Kodiyeri, the son of Kerala CPI(M) leader Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, in a money laundering case arising out of a drug seizure made in Bengaluru in 2020. Bineesh was arrested on October 29, 2020, in a Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) case related to the drug haul and was in jail for a year. He later got conditional bail from the Karnataka High Court in October last year.
The probe agency, in its plea, has sought cancellation of his bail on multiple grounds, including that there are materials suggesting that he was trying to influence witnesses in the case. The ED probe stems from a case being investigated by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) that claimed to have busted an ecstasy pills drug trafficking racket in Karnataka in August last year.
Bineesh Kodiyeri's name surfaced in the Bengaluru drug case when Anoop Muhammed a native of Kochi, and two others were arrested and questioned by the Narcotics Control Bureau. One of the accused told the NCB that Kodiyeri was his business partner and he has invested heavily in the trade leading to the entry of the ED in the case to probe the money laundering aspect. Kodiyeri had stepped down as the state secretary of the CPI(M) in November 2020 days after Bineesh’s arrest.
The ED has claimed that Kodiyeri sent unaccounted money to the bank account of an alleged drug peddler and took heavy returns from it. Bineesh Kodiyeri, however, has been maintaining that he helped Anoop Mohammad to open a restaurant and he was not aware of his narcotic business. He had also said he was implicated in the case by the central agency to target his father, who is a CPI(M) state secretary and politburo member.
(With PTI inputs)