Kerala Gold Smuggling Case: High Court Dismisses Plea Seeking Probe Into Alleged Involvement Of CM Pinarayi Vijayan, Other Officials

The Kerala High Court on Wednesday dismissed a petition seeking a time bound investigation by Customs and the Enforcement Directorate into the alleged role of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, former speaker P Sreeramakrishnan and other high ranking officials of the Chief Minister’s office on allegations of money laundering and gold smuggling using diplomatic channels A single bench of. The Kerala High Court on Wednesday dismissed a petition seeking a time bound investigation by Customs and the Enforcement Directorate into the alleged role of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, former speaker P Sreeramakrishnan and other high ranking officials of the Chief Minister’s office on allegations of money laundering and gold smuggling using diplomatic channels A single bench of Justice Bechu Kurian Thomas dismissed the petition observing that apprehensions of the petitioner that proper investigation was not being conducted in the gold smuggling case was baseless: “The Customs as well as the Enforcement Directorate, have conducted or are conducting proper investigations. Other than assumptions that the investigation is not being conducted properly, petitioner has not produced any material before this Court to arrive at a conclusion that the investigation would proceed contrary to law.” Maintainability of the Petition The court also held that the petition filed was not maintainable as the same matter with similar reliefs had already been considered by two different division benches of the High Court SCC Online Ker 2794] and Michael Varghese v. Pinarayi Vijayan and Others ). The previous writ petitions had also sought for fair and impartial investigation into gold smuggling allegations and related scams by investigating agencies, especially of the alleged involvement of the Chief Minister.