Vellapally Natesan, General Secretary of the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana (SNDP) Yogam, on Saturday defended his son Thushar Vellapally, who was arrested in a cheque default case in the UAE on Tuesday, and said: "My son was never jailed, instead he was in a police station at Ajman and it was because of the prompt intervention of business magnate M.A. Yusuf Ali that he got bail.
"Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had called me and said that he had spoken to Ali who would do the needful. Soon after that Ali also called me. He assured me that there is no need to worry and that Thushar will get bail. A few hours after that, Thushar got bail. Everyone knows that the case against my son is a fraudulent one and that he has been trapped in a false cheque bounce case," Natesan said.
While criticising Pillai, Natesan said: "Pillai was trying to fish in troubled waters and that was pretty bad. Pillai is no doubt a very good lawyer, but here he messed up things. Don't know what was happening to him."
Thushar Vellapally is the President of the Bharath Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS) which is a key ally of the BJP in the southern state. He had unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha polls against Rahul Gandhi from Wayanad on a BJP ticket.
The cheque dishonour case was filed in the UAE by a Keralite, N. Abdullah, with whom Thushar Vellapally had a sub-contracting agreement a decade ago. The company was later wound up by Natesan. Abdullah has claimed that Thushar Vellapally owed money to his creditors, and the cheques that he gave to his creditors bounced.
( With inputs from IANS )