Vigilance to probe if officials misused power in graftcases

Kerala Vigilance is mulling action against investigating officials who allegedly "abused" their power to help the accused in various corruption cases, including in the controversial bar bribery scam involving former ministers K M Mani and K Babu.
The agency would seek legal opinion with regard to launching a probe against the officials to find out if they had "abused or misused" their power to sabotage the cases.
Vigilance and Anti Corruption Bureau director and DGP Jacob Thomas said he would seek legal opinion to know whether the alleged act of officials would also come under the ambit of corruption.
"We are looking into whether the officials who investigated the corruption cases have abused their power to save those accused in various corruption cases," he told PTI.

"I am studying these corruption cases from the point of view of (alleged) suppressing of enquiry and destroying of evidence by the officials," he said.
The bar bribery allegations came out after the UDF government's new liquor policy in 2014, which envisaged total prohibition in the state in the next 10 years.

As part of the policy, five star hotels were only permitted to serve foreign liquor in the state.
More than 700 foreign liquor bars below the five star category were closed down in August 2014 as per the new policy.
Mani, who was facing charges of receiving a Rs one crore bribe to re-open the closed bars in the state, had to resign from the Chandy government in November last year following a court observation against him in this regard.

Though Babu, who was facing charges of accepting Rs 10 crore bribe for renewal of licenses of bars, had resigned in January this year, he withdrew his resignation and rejoined the cabinet after a week.