A senior bureaucrat who has been removed in the aftermath of the Kerala gold smuggling case and a minister had been in touch with some of the prime accused around a month before the crime, leaked call data suggest.

Higher education minister K.T. Jaleel held a media conference on Tuesday to clarify that the calls to Swapna Suresh, a former employee of the UAE consulate in Thiruvananthapuram who has been arrested in connection with the case, had been made in an official capacity for a food-distribution project. Jaleel has received the support of chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

The records also show that IAS officer M. Sivasankar, who has been removed from the helm of the chief minister’s office and the Kerala information technology department, had exchanged lengthy calls with Swapna and P.S. Sarith, another former consulate employee who has also been arrested.

The gold was smuggled on July 5. The call data pertains to the period between April 20 and June 1.

According to the records, Sivasankar had exchanged calls with Swapna frequently and with Sarith 14 times during that period. While nine of the calls had gone from Sarith’s phone, four were made from Sivasankar’s official cellphone number.

Sarith had also called once each the UAE consulate’s driver and the diplomat who was the consignee of the cargo, according to the call records. The diplomat has denied any link with the contraband.

Sivasankar was being questioned by customs officials till late on Tuesday night.

Jaleel, the minister, said at the media conference that he had spoken to Swapna in connection with the UAE consulate’s food distribution gesture during Ramazan.

Swapna had ceased to be an employee of the consulate last year and had been working on contract at an IT park since. But in her bail plea, Swapna had said: “You may ask why I am dabbling with the UAE consulate when I am an employee of the Space Park. That’s my love towards the UAE where I was born and raised. The UAE is my life.”

On Tuesday, Jaleel said: “I received a message from the UAE consul-general on May 27, 2020. The consulate distributes food kits during Ramazan every year. But this year they could not distribute food kits due to the lockdown. So in the message I received, the consul-general told me that the consulate wanted to distribute food kits and I could inform them if there was a need anywhere.”

The minister added: “He asked me how to arrange the food kits. I suggested that we could source them from Consumerfed, which is a state government establishment,” Jaleel said. “He replied saying Swapna would contact me.”

“Eventually, thousands of food kits were distributed among the needy in Edappal and surrounding areas (in Malappuram district),” the minister told the media.

He said he called up Swapna when Consumerfed informed him about non-payment of bills sent to the consul-general’s address in Thiruvananthapuram. “So I called Swapna and told her about this and the bills were paid,” Jaleel said.

Asked why he had to call Swapna eight times, the minister replied that there were several issues such as packing the food kits in a bag bearing an UAE logo.

“There were these brief conversations (with Swapna) about the purchase, packing, printing and distribution,” Jaleel said, adding: “None of the calls were made during odd hours.”

Jaleel said Swapna had been a regular at the UAE National Day celebrations and iftaar at the consulate.

Told that Swapna was sacked last year and that she had since been working as an operations manager at the Space Park of the IT department, Jaleel said he could only go by what the consulate-general had told him

Chief minister Vijayan said later during his daily media briefing that Jaleel had explained everything. “He has explained to you (media) about the calls that he had to make in his official capacity,” Vijayan said.

Asked if he would suspend his former secretary Sivasankar, Vijayan said it was not time yet. “There is no ground to suspend him as yet. The moment this investigation proves that there was some lapse on his part, there will be immediate action,” the chief minister said.

A departmental inquiry into possible lapses on Sivasankar’s part is being conducted by a committee headed by chief secretary Vishwas Mehta.