In a shocking development, police have arrested Kerala’s former DGP T.P. Senkumar’s appointee in a gold smuggling case at the UAE Consulate. The accused gunman S.R. Jayaghosh told NIA officers that he often collected the diplomatic baggage with smuggled gold from the international airport. Now, it is being alleged that former DGP violated the process specified in the Kerala Government Home Department (Secret Section A) Order in selecting gunman Jayaghosh for the Consulate position and his involvement in the smuggling case has stunned the public.
It has been found out that an estimate of at least 200 kg gold was smuggled in multiple consignments through the diplomatic channels at the Thiruvananthapuram airport, all destined for the UAE Consulate. Jayaghosh including his partners Swapna Suresh, Sarith and cargo agent Sandeep Nair have confessed that jewellery shop owners who were having branches in the Middle-East were involved in smuggling through diplomatic baggage and were making profits (nearly 100 percent including taxes and duties) from the huge cost differences in gold prices between India and Dubai. The smuggled gold was concealed in steel packs and were claimed as food items. The smugglers spent Rs 8 crore for gold in Dubai and ultimately its price was almost doubled at Rs 15 crore when it reached Thiruvananthapuram.
Diplomatic baggage is not checked, unless there is permission from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). Because of advanced imaging technology, however, the Customs Officers can see what is coming through the baggage scanner, and in this case, that is apparently what happened, and permission was indeed granted by MEA to open the luggage.
Former Kerala Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala who appointed Senkumar to the post of DGP has confessed that it was his “biggest mistake”. At the time, Senkumar was seen as a loyalist of Chennithala. Postretirement, Kumar switched to the BJP.
Senkumar was one of the police officers implicated in the proven false allegations case against legendary ISRO cryogenic rocket engine head Nambi Narayanan, who received the Padma Bhushan from the Government of India and Rs 1 crore from the Kerala government as compensation for all the indignities (including alleged torture) he had to suffer from the fake case designed to thwart India’s progress in liquid propulsion systems.
Thereafter, Senkumar had been making multiple allegations against the Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute of Medical Sciences and Technology (SCT) and its director, Prof Asha Kishore, an internationally acclaimed movement disorder specialist in Neurology. SCT is among the top institutions that have been given autonomous national importance status by Parliament, specifically for ensuring excellence. Under Prof Asha Kishore, it has achieved great recognition for path-breaking anti-Covid technologies achieved at a record speed.
Ex-DGP Senkumar, with no scientific background, is nonetheless on boards of the high science institution SCT, an appointment courtesy the Central government. His post-retirement foray into “politics” has been controversial, with it being characterised as one of fits and starts. Earlier this year, Kumar had a verbal altercation at his own press conference with a journalist over a question he did not like, and had the journalist physically removed from the press conference — not something any astute politician would do. Thereafter, Senkumar lodged a case against the same journalist which was investigated by the police and found to be false and so the case was thrown out.
In a poignant scene vividly described in the book Ready to Fire Nambi Narayanan recounts how sadness, anger, sleepless nights, and feelings of helplessness over the false allegations and the despicable coverage by a section of the media came to a point when he decided to commit suicide. He asked his lawyer friend to prepare his will without telling him why.
However, a few days later, his daughter Geetha picked up the phone when his lawyer friend told her to convey that Nambi’s will was ready to be collected, she instantly understood what was happening. She and Nambi’s son Sankar confronted Nambi. “So, you want to commit suicide?” Getting no response, she shouted at him, “You have decided, eh? What happened to my strongwilled Appa? I thought you will fight and prove to the world your innocence, show the world what you are, expose the people behind this controversy. If not any of that, just answer this. Do you want us to live as a traitor’s children? Do you want your grandchildren and the coming generations to live with such a tag?” It took that much for Nambi to realise what he ought to do rather than quitting, and he apologised to his children and resolved to live and fight.
But why should any scientist have to go through such agony just to prove his/her right to work peacefully and with dignity without having to confront false and manufactured allegations every day? Shouldn’t India build systems to protect its scientists working at breakneck speed and under horrendous constraints, financial, administrative and organisational?
In a sign of the anguish that motivated charges against top SCT officials is causing, faculty at SCT’s biomedical wing and clinical faculty have sent representations to Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan and President of SCT, Dr V.K. Saraswat who is Member, NITI Aayog, expressing confidence in the institution’s Director and President, and complaining about comments made by former DGP Senkumar to the media disparaging the institution, its breakthrough research and development ranging from India’s first heart valve to now anti-Covid-19 technologies, its advanced tertiary healthcare and public health interventions and training, while being on its Boards.
The scientific community believes that India under PM Modi should build credible systems to protect its scientific excellence from abusive and malicious behaviour. Perhaps Padma Bhushan scientist Nambi Narayanan, himself a victim of fake allegations, can lead a committee to ensure that.