Kerala Forest Minister accused of intervening in molestation case filed in opposition to get together chief

In contemporary headache for the Kerala authorities, Minister for Forest and Wildlife Protection AK Saseendran, has been accused of intervening in a case of molestation filed in opposition to a pacesetter of his get together and exerting strain to suppress it. Saseendran is a pacesetter of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), a associate within the LDF authorities in Kerala.
The sufferer, daughter of an area NCP chief in Kollam district’s Kundara, had filed a case of molestation in opposition to G Padmakaran, a member of the NCP state committee, on June 28.
According to the sufferer, the accused had touched her hand inappropriately when she visited his store on March 6. The accused purportedly held a grudge in opposition to her as she had contested the native physique elections in December final yr as a candidate of the BJP. He reportedly requested her if she acquired cash from the BJP for combating on the get together’s ticket. If so, he may provide her the identical cash, he advised her, in a disparaging tone.
The sufferer advised reporters Tuesday that a number of NCP district and state leaders referred to as her on the insistence of Saseendran and Varkala Ravikumar, a celebration chief, to request her to not go forward with the grievance. In the primary week of July, Saseendran himself telephoned her father asking him to ‘settle it in a good way.’
“The minister called my father and he knew what the issue was. The voice clip (of the call) clearly indicates that he knew what the case was about…when my father asked him how he should ‘resolve’ it, the minister hung up after a while,” she mentioned.

The name recording, now public, confirmed Saseendran’s dialog with the sufferer’s father. When the daddy asks him if he was speaking concerning the case filed in opposition to Padmakaran, the minister is heard saying, “Yes, yes, you must settle it. I heard about it and that’s why I’m telling you.” When the daddy asks him how he ought to ‘settle’ it, the minister smiles and says, “You know how to do that.”
Saseendran, on his half, claimed that he didn’t realize it was a case of molestation. “I thought it was a dispute between two workers of the party. When I understood that it was more than that, I withdrew,” he mentioned.
The Congress and the BJP have demanded the minister’s resignation.