Shoddy ED enquiry?Allegations mount over Kerala Police report on BJP's hawala funds being ignored

Thrissur: Despite Kerala Police submitting evidence and records showing that ₹41.4 crore was brought into Kerala for the BJP during the last Assembly elections, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) appears to have only investigated the ₹3.5-crore heist in Kodakara. Protests have erupted over the ED’s probe being trivialised and reduced to a local police-level investigation.

Kerala Police Chief, with necessary documentation, submitted a report in June 2022 to the Union Home Ministry, ED, Income Tax Department, and the Election Commission of India, stating that ₹41.4 crore, including the ₹3.5 crore heist in Kodakara, had been brought into the state as hawala money. The report also detailed the complete distribution of these funds between March 5 and April 5, 2021. An amount of ₹3.5 crore was stolen in Kodakara on April 3, just before the Assembly elections.

Police probe
The chargesheet filed by Kerala Police in the Kodakara hawala case confirms the illicit financial transactions and involvement of BJP leaders. However, the ED’s investigation apparently omitted these aspects entirely.

The police chargesheet lists former BJP state president K Surendran as the seventh witness, and his son KS Harikrishnan as the 145th witness. Dharmarajan, the second witness, is identified in the chargesheet as a hawala agent, which was mentioned in the first page of the chargesheet. The document also states that Dharmarajan, with Surendran’s knowledge, transported funds from Karnataka for the BJP’s election campaign.

According to the chargesheet, BJP state coordinating secretary M Ganesh (eighth witness) and state office secretary Girishan Nair (ninth witness) instructed Dharmarajan to bring hawala money from Bengaluru. A total of ₹23 crore was transferred through hawala agents in Kozhikode.

The police also attached Dharmarajan’s call records, which show that he spoke with Surendran’s son KS Harikrishnan, 10 times, totalling 361 seconds. He also had two calls lasting eight seconds with Girishan Nair, 15 calls totalling 485 seconds with BJP Thrissur district treasurer Sujay Senan, and nine calls amounting to 356 seconds with Alappuzha district secretary Gopalakrishnan Kartha.

The police also found that Dharmarajan spoke with Surendran’s driver Libish six times for a total of 361 seconds using another phone. 

Despite these findings, Kerala Police’s report to the ED apparently was not taken.