Kodakara case: Police charge sheet uncovers BJP leaders' hawala links

Thrissur: The documents detailing the connections of BJP leaders have emerged in the charge sheet submitted by the police team probing the Kodakara hawala money case.

In the charge sheet, BJP state president K. Surendran is listed as the seventh witness, while his son, K.S. Harikrishnan, is named as the 145th witness.

According to the charge sheet, the second witness, Dharmarajan is a hawala agent and he brought money from Karnataka with Surendran's knowledge.

Dharmarajan reportedly transported Rs 23 crores through hawala agents in Kozhikode, following instructions from BJP state coordinating secretary M. Ganesh and state office secretary Gireeshan Nair.

The charge sheet reveals that Dharmarajan's phone made several calls to other witnesses in the case. The sixth witness, Sunilkumar, spoke with Dharmarajan nine times for a total of 531 seconds between April 2 and 3.

K.S. Harikrishnan had ten conversations with Dharmarajan lasting 512 seconds. Gireeshan Nair spoke with him twice for eight seconds. Additionally, Dharmarajan contacted Thrissur District Treasurer Sujay Senan 15 times for 485 seconds, and Alappuzha District Secretary Gopalakrishnan Kartha had nine calls with him lasting 356 seconds.

Further, Dharmarajan contacted K. Surendran's driver, Libeesh, six times for 361 seconds using another phone and spoke with Surendran's secretary, Dipin, once, it says in the charge sheet.

Kodakara Case

The Kodakara heist took place three days before the state elections on April 6, 2021. In the wee hours of April 3, a group of people waylaid a car (KL-56G 6789) by blocking it from both sides using two cars. Subsequently, the complainant, who is the driver of the car, and his friend were dragged out of the car and manhandled. A sum of Rs 25 lakh and the car, worth rupees eight lakh, were stolen in the incident.

Soon after the incident, the driver of the vehicle, Shamjeer Shamsudeen, informed Dharmarajan, who is named as a hawala agent by police in the chargesheet, about the robbery. A day after the elections, Shamjeer Shamsudeen complained to the Kodakara police station. The investigation later found that the robbed amount was not Rs 25 lakh but Rs 3.5 crore. Police also claim that the money was sourced illegally from Bengaluru through the hawala agent for meeting the expenses of the BJP in the state polls.

However, the police could not trace Rs 1.47 crore of the Rs 3.5 crore that was robbed. The Special Investigation Team (SIT) has arrested 22 people and there are 219 witnesses in the case, including prominent BJP leaders. However, none of the BJP leaders were named in the chargesheet submitted by the SIT in the Thrissur Sessions Court. Police were unable to register a case against the BJP leaders as 'hawala dealings' were not within their purview.

It was at this juncture, that various political party leaders and social activists approached the ED to intervene and to register a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, of 2002. However, ED did not respond to the requests. Usually, ED takes up such cases involving crores of rupees, if there is a predicate offence (a case registered by any law enforcing body).