As part of the ongoing developments in to the gold smuggling case, National Investigation Agency gazed at Kerala Secretariat. NIA’s eyes reached the premises of Kerala Secretariat and the investigation team asked the CCTV footages of Secretariat from 1st May to 4th July. It is the first time in the history that an investigation agency put its close watch upon a government secretariat.
NIA gave a letter to Kerala Chief Secretary in connection with collecting the CCTV footages in Secretariat. It was on July 4th the Customs seized 30 kilos of gold, which was addressed as a diplomatic baggage, at Thiruvananthapuram International Airport. In connection with the case, three prime accused were under the custody of investigation agencies.
Yesterday, the investigation agency called the former IT secretary M Shivashanker IAS and his interrogation will continue. Mr Shivashanker suspended from the post on July 7th in connection with a suspicious women who is actively involved in the gold smuggling case.
The investigation agencies suspects there are more people involved directly or indirectly in the smuggling case, who are still behind the scenes. The NIA needs to get the CCTV footages from secretariat, to get the back door scenes of the smuggling case. However the response from the Kerala chief secretary’s office has been disappointing. As per the latest reports from secretariat, the CCTV cameras installed in the chief secretary’s office are not functioning from May onwards…
The chief secretary also informed to the probe team that the additional secretary of public administration’s housekeeping department is the custodian of CCTV footages. According to the additional secretary of public administration, there are 83 cameras installed in the secretariat premises.
The Additional secretary of public administration told that the CCTV footages from the Chief Minister’s office and former IT Secretary’s office are available. It is alleged that Swapna Suresh one of the prime accused have a close connection with some of the ministers in the cabinet but yet to prove. Some sources revealed that Swapna Suresh got help from Chief Minister’s office and she accessed the CMO block by bypassing the strong security system installed in the secretariat.
The storage capacity of CCTV visuals in the secretariat is maximum up to one year. But the information from the secretariat shows that some of the cameras are not functioning. They got damaged by lightning but NIA says the visuals can be recovered.
However the CCTV footages asked by the NIA are seems to be relevant therefore housekeeping department had said that the visuals of that day were not available
