Suspended IAS officer M. Sivasankar, who was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in the diplomatic package gold smuggling case, was granted bail on Monday. The Kerala High Court granted bail to Sivasankar, former principal secretary to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, in a case registered by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with the gold smuggling. Earlier in the day, he was granted bail in a case registered by the Customs for his alleged involvement in the gold smuggling.
However, Sivasankar will remain in custody since he is yet to get bail in another case registered by the Customs in the dollar smuggling case that came to light during the probe into the gold smuggling racket in Kerala.
Sivasankar was suspended after his links to Swapna Suresh, one of the main accused in the gold smuggling case, surfaced.
Sivasankar was arrested on October 29 soon after his anticipatory bail plea was rejected by the Kerala High Court. Since then he had been in the custody of the ED.
The case emerged after Customs had arrested P.S. Sarith, a former employee of the UAE Consulate in Thiruvananthapuram, on July 5 for allegedly smuggling gold in a diplomatic baggage. Another former Consulate staffer Swapna Suresh and her associate Sandeep Nair were arrested by the National Investigation Agency from Bengaluru.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan removed Sivasankar as his Principal Secretary and then as IT Secretary after it allegedly surfaced that Swapna and Sivasankar were close friends.
The Customs had recorded his arrest him on January 21 at a jail in Kochi in a case related to alleged smuggling of USD 1,90,000 (equivalent to Rs 1.30 crore) by a former finance head of the UAE Consulate in Thiruvananthapuram to Muscat in Oman.
