Woman scribe not to withdraw case against Saseendran over sleaze chat

A woman journalist, who had approached Kerala High Court to withdraw a case filed in a lower court against former Kerala Minister A K Saseendran over sleaze chat, told the high court on Friday that she is taking back her petition to withdraw the case.

The woman journalist had filed a case over an alleged sleaze phone chat against Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader and former Kerala Minister Saseendran. However, in November last year, she approached the high court stating that all issues have been resolved and sought permission to withdraw the petition from the lower court.

Consequent to the latest move on Friday, the case will now go back to the trial court in Thiruvananthapuram, making it tough for Saseendran, who was expecting to return to the Cabinet had the high court allowed the original petition to be withdrawn.

Speaking to media persons later, Saseendran said he has no clue about what happened in the court and will have to find out about the new development.

In March 2017, Saseendran resigned as Transport Minister over an audio clip in which he is heard having a lewd phone conversation with a woman journalist of Mangalam TV channel and this was telecast the day the channel commenced operations.

This was first termed as a "honey trap" but the lady filed a case against the minister in a court in Thiruvananthapuram.

The Pinarayi Vijayan government saw this as an act of unethical journalism and ordered a judicial probe as well as police probe, and the police arrested five journalists, who are all currently out on bail.

Trouble arose for Saseendran when three persons filed petitions to be impleaded in the case and asked the court not to allow withdrawal of the petition.

Hearing the petition on Friday, the High Court pointed out that "this issue is not just between two individuals and what is even more important is the person against whom the complaint was happens to be a former minister too".