Kerala minister for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) K Radhakrishnan has received death threats after he started to take strong steps in the embezzlement of funds meant for the community. The minister's office has pointed out that the threats came on the landline number of his office in the state Secretariat.
More than half a dozen officials have been alleged to have been involved in misappropriation of funds and one of them, UR Rahul, has already been arrested, while a few others managed to get anticipatory bail.
The accused have been found misappropriating around Rs 4 lakh between August last year and March, 2021.
Radhakrishnan said that they will not be cowed down by such threats and strict action will be taken, even as they have resorted to such acts.
Rahul, the clerk who has been arrested, has by now tampered and destroyed his mobile and laptop, which according to the police probe team, was done when he travelled to Delhi.
The probe team will take the accused to Delhi as part of the investigation.
The Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have raised this issue of graft and have launched a series of protests and one such protest was held before the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation office.
The BJP which is the opposition in the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation has demanded for a special meeting to discuss this graft and a CBI probe into the same.
The funds are meant for the various programmes for the upliftment of the SC/ST community and this programme is conducted with the help of SC promoters in the Corporation office.
Radhakrishnan has already gone on record to state that this discrepancy was found by his department itself and all the wrongdoers will be taken to task.
This surfaced after Rahul was transferred from the job he was doing and a probe found out that the money was transferred to other bank accounts.
Recently CPI(M) MLA from Alappuzha PP Chitharanjan and Congress MLA from Kottayam Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan also received death threats.