THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Swapna Suresh, the prime accused in the Kerala gold smuggling case on Wednesday appeared before a local court here in a fake degree certificate case.
In August last year, a team of Kerala Police officials arrested a person from Punjab for creating the forged and fake degree certificate for Swapna Suresh.
She used this certificate to get a plush job at the state run Space Park, with the help of her close friend M. Sivasankar and now jailed former Principal Secretary to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
Swapna was arrested for gold smuggling by an NIA team from Bengaluru in July 2020. Around the same time news surfaced that Swapna has not even passed Class 10, but managed to get a degree certificate from Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Open University. It was alleged that she used this certificate along with her influence with high-ranking officials like Sivasankar to got a plush job in the IT department, which is headed by CM Vijayan.
A case was registered against her, but for long the case did not move. After she made some revelations last June that CM Vijayan, his wife and daughter were engaged in gold smuggling, the police have been digging into cases involving her. The police team reached Punjab and took into custody the person who created the certificate for Swapna.
Since then the police have been on fast track in this case which will be heard on May 29 by the local court here.