CPM forced me to level charge against Cong leader: Goonda

Hawala dealer and goonda Sreedharan alias Kodali Sreedharan, who had hit the headlines in September last after he leveled serious charges against certain Congress leaders including VM Sudheeran, said on Wednesday that he had raised such allegations under threat from CPI(M) leaders, the TV channel it controlled and the police.

Sreedharan told the media when he reached the Magistrate Court at Parappanangadi in the district in a criminal case that a CPI(M) leader from Kannur and people from Kairali, the television channel controlled by the Marxist party had forced him to level (false) charges against Congress leaders. “There was the threat from the police also,” he said.

Asked for an explanation for leveling charges against Sudheeran, Sreedharan said he did not even know the Congress leader. He said the CPI(M) leader and the channel workers had told him that they could get him off the hooks in the various cases he was facing if he spoke against Sudheeran. Sreedharan had earlier appeared on television to charge Sudheeran with accepting election funds from him.

He said a CPI(M) leader from Kannur had visited him in September, 2007 when he was in Bangalore to force him to speak against Congress leaders. “The same leader and a man from the (Kairali) TV channel had visited me when I was staying at a hotel in Chalakudy in Thrissur district. They repeated their demand. There was also the threat from the police,” he said.

Sreedharan was in the court in connection with a case pertaining to the attack against a jewellery owner in Thirurangadi in Malappuram district. The court, which accepted his plea that he should be subjected to narco-analysis, granted bail to him. The case would now be taken up on January 27.

The CPI(M) had used Kodali Sreedharan’s allegation against Sudheeran, known as one of the cleanest Congress leaders, when the party and the LDF Government were facing widespread criticism for the way the investigation in the sensational Muthoot Paul murder case was progressing. The Congress had even then denied the allegation saying that leaders like Sudheeran need not get certificates from the CPI(M) to prove their moral background.

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