A. Saifudeen Haji, director, Siraj daily, and vice-president, Kerala Muslim Jamaat, on Friday alleged that Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan and Chief Secretary Bishwanath Sinha had a role in scuttling the decision to appoint a special public prosecutor to take forward the trial in the case pertaining to death of journalist K.M. Basheer.
The allegation came a day after the Kerala High Court stayed the trial for one month and called for the relevant government files related to a September 17 government order rejecting Basheer’s wife Jaseela C.’s demand that a special public prosecutor be appointed.
Basheer, who headed the Siraj news bureau in Thiruvananthapuram, was killed in 2019 after his two-wheeler was rammed by a car allegedly driven by IAS officer Sriram Venkitaraman.
Mr. Saifudeen said that the government decided against appointing the special public prosecutor after informing the Kerala High Court that it had, in principle, decided to appoint A. Santhosh Kumar as the special public prosecutor. The court had, through an August 18 order, allowed the government one month’s time to complete the formalities.
According to Mr. Saifudeen, Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala had fully backed Ms. Jaseela’s demand. However, the government had rejected her demand in a September 17 order. It noted that her representations did not point out any “specific shortcoming, weakness, incompetence or inefficiency” on the part of the present public prosecutor. The Chief Minister and the Chief Secretary had intervened to undermine the original Home department decision to appoint the special public prosecutor, Mr. Saifudeen alleged. He added that the Home Minister had expressed his helplessness.
Mr. Saifudeen cited the present situation as another instance of the attempts by certain sections to delay the trial endlessly and close the case involving an IAS officer. “The case is already seven years old,” he said. It was in July this year that Ms. Jaseela wrote to the Home Minister and the Additional Chief Secretary (Home) seeking the appointment of a special prosecutor alleging that the case was being delayed despite the chargesheet being submitted a mere six months after her husband was killed on August 3, 2019. Mr. Saifudeen described the situation as a “denial of natural justice.”
