By IANS,
Kochi : Less than two months after a former official of Kerala government-owned Malabar Cements and his two sons were found hanging in their home, the CBI Monday named the firm’s managing director and two others for abetment of suicide.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), in its first information report (FIR) submitted at the chief judicial magistrate’s court here, named Malabar Cements managing director Sundara Murthy, his personal secretary Surya Narayanan and businessman V.M. Radhakrishnan as accused in the suicide of V. Saseendran.
V. Saseendran, 46, was the company secretary cum finance manager at the profitable Malabar Cements, where the vigilance department is looking into four cases of corruption. Saseendran was a key witness in all the cases.
Saseendran and his two sons, aged 10 and eight, were found hanging Jan 24 in their home in Palakkad, abut 500 km from the state capital Thiruvananthapuram, when his wife Teena returned from her workplace.
Saseendran had quit his job as company secretary in October last year after writing a letter to the chief minister about widespread corruption in the company. But he soon withdrew all the charges through another letter.
Initially dismissed as suicide, the Kerala High Court ordered a CBI probe into the case after demands by the family of the deceased.
Saseendaran was found dead a week after the vigilance department submitted a chargesheet in one of the graft cases and named former state chief secretary and former company chairman John Mathai, besides a few officials of the company and high profile businessman Radhakrishnan, who is said to be close to the bureaucrats and politicians.
Radhakrishnan has been taking up major contracts of Malabar Cements. Saseendran’s wife has alleged that Radhakrishnan had threatened her husband with dire consequences.
Radhakrishnan, however, has denied ever making any threats to the deceased.