PA Mohammed Riyas, a CPI(M) MLA and former Kerala public works minister, announced on Wednesday that he plans to contest the actions of the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) both legally and politically. This statement comes one day after the ED conducted raids at locations associated with his close associates in Kozhikode.
The raids were carried out in eight locations across Kozhikode district, including at a building owned by CPM district secretariat member P Nikhil and a house linked to a close friend of the Beypore MLA. They were part of the ED probe under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in the CMRL – Exalogic case. The case pertains to allegedly suspicious transactions between CMRL, a chemicals manufacturer, and Exalogic, a now-defunct IT firm, run by Veena T, who is Riyas’s wife and former CM Pinarayi Vijayan ‘s daughter. “Everyone knows how the BJP government at the Centre has misused agencies like ED. “We are not like those who get elected on the ‘hand’ symbol and join the BJP later. We will not run away.
We know that the ED is very selective about the cases it handles and others that it declines to probe,” he said. We are not scared,” he said.
