ED retains Sivasankar's custody till November 11

Kochi: Ex-Kerala Principal Secretary M. Sivasankar's custody with the Enforcement Directorate was on Thursday extended till next Wednesday by a local court here.

The bail application of the once powerful IAS officer will also be taken up on Wednesday.

Sivasankar was arrested on October 29 soon after his anticipatory bail plea was rejected by the Kerala High Court and since then he has been in the custody of the ED.

The Customs had arrested P.S. Sarith, a former employee of the UAE Consulate here, on July 5 for allegedly smuggling gold in a diplomatic baggage destined for the Consulate. Another former Consulate staffer Swapna Suresh and her associate Sandip Nair were arrested by the National Investigation Agency from Bengaluru.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan removed Sivasankar as his Principal Secretary and then as IT Secretary after it allegedly surfaced that Swapna and Sivasankar were close friends.

But following numerous rounds of probes by the various agencies, Sivasankar's position appears weakened and on Thursday the ED informed the court that he had divulged official secrets relating to certain flagship projects like Life Mission, K-Phone and Smart City to the arrested accused in the gold smuggling case, including prime accused Swapna Suresh.

The ED is gearing up for its next round of targets, as on Friday they have asked the second most powerful official in Vijayan's office - assistant private secretary C.M. Ravindran to appear before them.

Incidentally it has now come to light that it was the axis of Sivasankaran and Ravindran which was running the show in Vijayan's office.

Hence Friday is going to be a crucial day for Vijayan as the ED is going to question them together.

Ravindran has been a confidant of Vijayan for long and he has had long tenures in the office of powerful CPI-M leaders including V.S. Achuthanandan and Kodiyeri Balakrishnan when he was the tourism minister in 2006-11.