Shrunken underwear is now troublesome for Kerala min

Lokmat News Network

Aurangabad, July 22: Transport Minister of Kerala, Antony Raju, is embroiled in a controversy surrounding a case of a shrunken underwear in evidence, dating back to early 1990s when he was a practicing lawyer.

In April 1990, one Andrew Salvatore Cervelli, an Australian citizen, was arrested at Thiruvananthapuram airport for smuggling 61.5 grams of hashish by concealing it in his underwear.

He was convicted under the NDPS Act for 10 years rigorous imprisonment.

Cervelli appealed in the Kerala High Court (HC). He was represented then by a junior lawyer named Antony Raju. It was argued that the underwear in evidence was too small to fit him, and smaller than the recorded size. The HC verified this and acquitted Cervelli who went back to Australia.

Not too long after he returned, he was arrested in Victoria (Australia) on a murder charge. While in jail, he told other inmates about his escapades in India, especially a tale of how he managed to hoodwink Indian police and courts.

The Australian National Central Bureau quickly informed the Indian authorities concerned that when Cervelli's co-accused in the murder case was being interviewed, he had revealed that Cervelli's family and lawyers had bribed a court official and either swapped or altered the underwear that was in evidence.

The investigating officer in the case soon approached the Kerala HC seeking a probe into this evidence tampering. Subsequently, Thiruvananthapuram Police registered a case against Antony Raju and a court clerk Jose.

They were chargesheeted in 2006 for having committed offences such as conspiracy, cheating, destruction and fabrication of evidence, breach of public faith, among others.

The trial of the case did not begin. Given the short attention span of the public and media, the case was all but forgotten until a week ago, when a Judicial Magistrate First Class, Thiruvananthapuram ordered Police to produce all the files relevant to 2006 case of evidence tampering, which had its genesis in a 32-year-old NDPS case.

Raju is currently the State Transport Minister and the leader of the Janadhipathya Kerala Congress party, which is part of the ruling Left Democratic Front coalition.

In the wake of the public furore about the unique case and the opposition's attempts to weaponise the same, the Kerala HC has sought a report on the delay in trial.

A petition has also been filed in the Kerala HC for expediting the trial. The case is currently listed before the magistrate court for consideration on August 4.

Interestingly, in 1991, a movie Aanaval Mothiram was released a year after the incident. The underwear episode is the exact story of this film.