Oppn & govt slug it out over smuggling case

Thiruvananthapuram: The opposition and the government locked horns in the assembly on Wednesday over the Ramanattukara gold smuggling case and the incidents relating to it, including the death of a man summoned by the customs in connection with the case.
Seeking leave for an adjournment motion, Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan MLA said Rameez K C (an accomplice of the main accused Arjun Ayanki), can be suspected to have been murdered to prevent the case details from coming out. He said as many as 20 cases of crime related to gold smuggling have been reported in the last one year near the airports in the state and the government cannot wash of its hands from the responsibility of maintaining law and order in the state.
Replying to the charges, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said it is the Centre’s responsibility to curb incidents like gold smuggling as customs has been included in the seventh schedule of the Constitution.
He said police have no role inside the airports even if they are deputed on some duties. Police have registered a case under Sections 279 and 304A of the IPC in the death of Rameez, and are probing the matter.
He said the accident occurred when Rameez’s bike crashed into a car from behind, when the car took a right turn.
The chief minister said the opposition charges regarding Rameez’s death is laughable, and added that there is no such situation in the prisons in the state because of which the TP Chandrasekharan case convicted need to be transferred to prisons outside the state as demanded by the opposition.
Opposition leader V D Satheesan said the opposition is talking about criminal activities being undertaken using party connections as a cover.
Reminding that it was not the state police but the customs which had arrested Ayankai, the main accused in the case, the opposition leader said that the court itself had remarked that Ayanki had connections with Kodi Suni and Muhammad Shafi, convicts in the TP-murder case and Akash Thillenkeri, an accused in the Youth Congress activist S P Shuhaib’s murder.
The opposition leader said the chief minister has made it a habit to personally demean the opposition leaders who are raising the matters inside the assembly, and said it is not the right way in a democratic set up. The opposition staged a walk-out after speaker M B Rajesh refused permission for an adjournment motion, based on the explanation by the chief minister.