Sivasankar's bail: HC reserves order, says no arrest till Oct 28

The Kerala High Court on Friday reserved its order on an anticipatory bail plea filed by now-suspended IAS officer M Sivasankar in the gold smuggling case and will pronounce it on October 28.

The court also extended the stay on the arrest of the former Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister by the Customs and Enforcement Directorate till that date.

On Friday, the court witnessed arguments between counsel of Customs and ED who threw light on the alleged crime of Sivasankar, which was strongly opposed to by the IAS official's counsel who pointed out that he had been questioned by various central agencies for over 100 hours and had travelled over 600 km till now for the same.

ED counsel even handed over in a sealed cover unspecified documents to the court and claimed that their content will leave no doubt about Sivasankar's role.

After hearing both sides, the court said that it needed to go through all documents and said its orders on the anticipatory bail will be delivered on Wednesday next and that there should be no arrest till then.

Last week, the court had first asked the Customs not to arrest Sivasankar till October 23 and later said the same to the ED also.

The National Investigation Agency on Thursday informed the court that it was not considering making Sivasankar an accused now and that his anticipatory bail plea need not be considered.

The Customs had arrested PS Sarith, a former employee of the UAE Consulate here, on July 5 for allegedly smuggling gold in a diplomatic baggage destined for the  Consulate. Another former Consulate staff Swapna Suresh and her associate Sandip Nair were arrested by the National Investigation Agency from Bengaluru.

Vijayan removed Sivasankar as his Principal Secretary and then as IT Secretary after it allegedly surfaced that Swapna and Sivasankar were close friends.