The Kerala High Court on Monday dismissed the bail plea of former state minister V K Ebrahim Kunju, arrested by the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB) in the flyover scam case. The court, however, granted Kunju, an IUML MLA, the liberty to file a fresh bail application once he was discharged from the hospital, where he is now undergoing treatment for cancer while under judicial custody.
Kunju, arrested on November 18 in connection with alleged corruption in the construction of a flyover here during the previous Congress-led UDF rule, moved the high court after a Vigilance Court in Muvattupuzha dismissed his bail application recently. He was quizzed by the VACB sleuths at the private hospital where his arrest was recorded following which a magistrate visited the premises and remanded him to judicial custody.
Kunju, representing Kalamassery constituency in the state assembly, was interrogated multiple times in the past by the agency in connection with the case. The Vigilance has alleged Kunju, then the Public Works Department Minister, sanctioned interest-free funds to the contracting company, which had built the flyover, now closed after it developed cracks within a year of its inauguration in 2016.
The arrest came eight months after he was arraigned as an accused in the case. Kunju has dismissed as "politically motivated" the charges that he was responsible for the poor quality of the bridge, built when he was the PWD minister in the previous UDF government headed by Oommen Chandy.