Gold smuggling case: NIA quizzes M Sivasankar again, this time along with Swapna Suresh

KOCHI: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday questioned M Sivasankar, former principal secretary to the chief minister, for the third time. He was reportedly questioned along with Swapna Suresh, the prime accused in the gold smuggling case, for nearly nine hours.
Sivasankar, who arrived at the NIA office here around 11am, remained cooped up with officials till around 8pm.Swapna, who was sent to NIA custody on Tuesday till Friday, was brought to the office after medical examination around 11.30am.
Though NIA sleuths remained tight-lipped about the details, the interrogation can be seen against the backdrop of the agency report filed in the court saying it has to confront the accused with data retrieved from Swapna's seized digital gadgets like laptops and smartphones.
The NIA had told the court that it had retrieved over 2TB data from the laptops and smartphones of Swapna and another accused Sandeep Nair. The bureaucrat could have been presented with the call records and deleted chat messages during the questioning.
The agency had questioned Swapna for 12 days after she was arrested in July.
Sivasankar was questioned for hours at Peroorkada police club on July 23. He was later summoned to the NIA office here on July 27 and 28 and questioned for over nine hours on both days.
Apart from the NIA, the Enforcement Directorate and Customs had questioned Sivasankar in the case. The ED had even submitted in the court that Sivasankar was fully aware of Swapna’s "dubious integrity''.
The agencies had found that Swapna had a meeting with Sivasankar when a state delegation was in the UAE from Oct 17-21, 2018, seeking flood relief from NRIs. In April 2018, Swapna had travelled to Oman and met Sivasankar, who was on a trip there, and they returned to India together. The ED has also submitted in the court documents of Sivasankar and Swapna travelling to the UAE and returning together in October 2019.
Another major allegation against Sivasankar is that Swapna had started a bank locker jointly with another person on his instructions. NIA had seized over Rs 1crore in Indian currency and 982.5g of gold ornaments from her lockers.
The statement of former IT fellow to the chief minister Arun Balachandran — that he had booked an accommodation for Swapna on Sivasankar's instance — also connects the bureaucrat to the accused.