Bineesh Kodiyeri, who is the son of CPI(M) Kerala state Secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, has been arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in Bengaluru for his links to an accused in the Bengaluru drug peddling cases.
He was taken into custody after he arrived at the Bengaluru Zonal office at 11 am for questioning on Thursday. After three hours of questioning, he was produced in the Bengaluru Sessions Court and his arrest was subsequently recorded. Bineesh has been sent to the custody of ED for four days.
This is the second time that Bineesh has been questioned by the ED in relation to this case. On 3 October, he was quizzed for over six hours in connection with the same.
Bineesh’s name surfaced in the Bengaluru drug cases when Anoop Mohammed, a native of Kochi, was held by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and questioned. Anoop was caught peddling drugs under the cover of running a restaurant in Bengaluru.
Bineesh had maintained that he and Anoop were friends, and that he had financially helped the latter to start a hotel a few years ago.
After Bineesh was quizzed by the ED last month in connection with the drugs case, the NCB had sought the details of his statement. Sources say that Bineesh and Anoop had other transactions and were constantly in touch with each other. Anoop was part of a gang operated by a woman called Anikha and officials had recovered a large amount of narcotics from both Anikha and Anoop.
The Enforcement Directorate is probing the money laundering angle in connection with the drug seizures made by the Narcotics Control Bureau in Bengaluru earlier in August.
Gold Smuggling Case
The drugs case is not the only trouble that Bineesh has found himself in. On September 9, the ED in Kochi had questioned Bineesh in connection with the ongoing controversial Kerala gold smuggling case. At the time, the ED had registered a case against him under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. It had asked the District Registrar General that his properties be frozen, with no transactions to be allowed on them.
Bineesh was questioned for over 11 hours on that day, in connection with the case of gold smuggled through diplomatic baggage via the Thiruvananthapuram International Airport.
The ED told a special court in Kochi that the accused in the drug cases were suspected to have assisted those who are allegedly involved in the gold smuggling case. The ED on Wednesday arrested M Sivasankar, former Principal Secretary of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, in connection with the case.
This story was first published in The News Minute and has been republished with permission)
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