In a huge boost for the ongoing election campaign for Chandy Oommen in the Puthuppally constituency of Kerala, a court in Thiruvananthapuram has accepted a probe report exonerating the late two-time chief minister Oommen Chandy in the sexual abuse complaint filed by the prime accused in the solar scam case. The report was submitted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Former Defence Minister AK Antony, while campaigning for Chandy Oommen at the constituency, asked the people to give a fitting reply by electing Chandy Oommen with a resounding margin for all the “smear campaign” that the Left front led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) used against Oommen Chandy. The CPI-M led Left used the solar scam case in both the 2016 and 2021 assembly polls against Chandy, though Chandy maintained he had done no wrong.
In August 2021, the CBI registered cases against Oommen Chandy, Venugopal, and Congress Lok Sabha members Hibi Eden and Adoor Prakash, Congress legislator AP Anilkumar, and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national vice president AP Abdulla Kutty. The cases were registered on a complaint filed by the solar scam accused, saying that she was sexually exploited by these leaders. She had raised a complaint to this effect with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who handed it over to the CBI, just before the April 2021 assembly elections.
She lodged the complaint due her displeasure with the Kerala Police probe into the case, which had failed to come to any conclusion after several years. The CBI had recently cleared Hibi Eden, Adoor, and Venugopal as well.