A court in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore district on Thursday sentenced three accused in Kerala’s solar scam – Saritha Nair, Biju Radhakrishnan, C Ravi – to three years in jail, PTI reported. The verdict came nearly ten years after they were booked in the case.
Nair and her partner Radhakrishnan were arrested in 2013 for duping investors of lakhs of rupees after promising to install solar panels for them or offering them shares in large solar farms. After receiving the money, they would disappear. Former Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy and other Congress ministers were also accused of taking large amounts of money and sexual favours as part of the scam.
Ravi was the manager in one such company, International Consultancy and Management Solutions, in Coimbatore. They collected Rs 26 lakh from two industrialists after promising to install solar panels for them with central subsidy.
Sixth Judicial Magistrate KR Kannan pronounced the sentence and held them guilty of cheating the two industrialists of over Rs 32 lakh. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 on them.
The scam had made headlines during the previous Congress-led United Democratic Front rule in Kerala. In 2017, a judicial commission which probed the scam, submitted a report stating that former Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and four of his personal staff had “assisted” Nair and her company to cheat the customers. Chandy, however, alleged that the report was “prejudicial”.
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