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The death by suspected suicide of local Congress leader N M Vijayan and his 38-year-old son Jijesh has kicked up a political storm in Wayanad, the constituency represented by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, with the CPI(M) and BJP raking up an alleged cash-for-job fraud at a cooperative bank involving senior Congress leaders.
Calling for a comprehensive probe into the deaths, CPI (M) district secretary K Rafeeque said Congress Sulthan Bathery MLA I C Balakrishnan (once the Congress Wayanad district president) and the party leadership must be booked for “abetment to suicide”. “After Congress leaders pocketed large amounts of money by promising jobs in the cooperative urban sector and failed to give them, the aspirants wanted Vijayan and other leaders to return the money. This drove Vijayan and his son to suicide,” Rafeeque claimed.
Vijayan, 78, the Wayanad District Congress Committee (DCC) treasurer, and Jijesh, who was bed-ridden, are believed to have consumed poison on Tuesday, and died at a government medical college in Kozhikode Friday. Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP) of Sulthan Bathery K K Abdul Sharreef said that while they had not discovered any suicide note nor received a complaint from the family, a case of unnatural death had been registered.
A person close to the family said Vijayan was lonely since his wife’s death a few years ago, particularly as a road accident had left Jijesh bed-ridden. An employee of incidentally the same cooperative bank as named by the CPI(M) and BJP in the allegations, Jijesh had been on leave after his disability.
Kerala BJP president K Surendran sought Balakrishnan’s arrest, saying: “The father-son duo is the latest victim of the fraud in cooperative banks of the state. The MLA must be arrested and complaints of those who lost money in the job fraud must be probed.”
The alleged scam, involving a Congress-controlled cooperative bank at Sulthan Bathery, dates back to 2019. The CPI(M) and BJP have claimed that Vijayan took lakhs of rupees from job aspirants at the behest of Congress leaders, including Balakrishnan, promising them posts at the bank. No formal complaint was ever lodged in connection with the allegations. But what has contributed to the Congress’s embarrassment is that a copy of a job agreement, purportedly signed by Vijayan, has surfaced.
The letter, which names Balakrishnan, states that Rs 30 lakh was paid for a job at the Sulthan Bathery cooperative bank. And that Vijayan had accepted the money in his capacity as the Congress’s Wayanad district treasurer, with the promise to return the money in case the aspirant failed to get the job.
Refuting the allegations, Balakrishnan has said the letter is “fabricated”. Asserting that “truth must prevail”, he said: “I had taken a strong stand against corruption when I served as the president of the bank. No applicant ever approached me. I will file a police complaint. Let a probe bring out the names of all those who were involved in the transactions.”
Current Wayanad district Congress president N D Appachan said they have urged the state leadership to probe the incident and the related allegations. “A Kerala PCC-level probe will be launched into the deaths. It is the party’s responsibility to bring the truth out,” he said.
Vijayan was a senior Congress leader in Wayanad and had held posts of president of the Sulthan Bathery panchayat and later, a councillor, after it was granted the status of a municipality.
He was an officer-bearer of the district Congress for over a decade, and before being elevated to the treasurer’s post, served as its general secretary for several years.
