A senior customs official who filed a statement containing serious accusations of “illegal monetary transactions” against Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan has declared an open war against the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) whose members marched to various offices of the department in protest on Saturday.

“A political party trying intimidation, will not work,” customs commissioner Sumit Kumar said in a Facebook post just around the time when thousands of LDF workers marched to customs offices in Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Kozhikode on Saturday morning as part of their protest against the timing of the statement that came ahead of the April 6 elections.

Along with the comment, Kumar posted two news clippings of the story about Vijayan being linked to the scam. The officer had on Friday filed a statement before the Kerala High Court quoting a confidential statement recorded by Swapna Suresh, one of the key accused in a gold-smuggling case. In her statements, Swapna has named the chief minister, the Assembly Speaker and three ministers in the smuggling of $190,000 (approximately Rs 1.3 crore) by the consul-general of the UAE in Thiruvananthapuram.

A former secretary of the consul-general, Swapna has been accused of attempting to smuggle 30kg of gold ingots from Dubai in July 2020.

Her statement that raised serious allegations against Vijayan, Speaker P. Sreeramakrishnan and three unnamed ministers, comes at a time the state elections are just a month away. This made the LDF cry political vendetta and manipulation by central agencies to tarnish the government.

The alleged smuggling of dollars is linked to a kickback scam in the construction of homes for the 2018 flood victims. It is alleged that the UAE consul-general had sought the kickback in dollars from a local contractor assigned for the project entirely funded by Emirates Red Crescent. The money was allegedly smuggled to Muscat by a former financial head of the consulate.

Thiruvananthapuram district secretary of CPM Anavoor Nagappan said he would be surprised if customs officers did not post such messages on social media. “I am not surprised at this since they are not just investigating officers, but agents of the BJP.”

He accused the Centre of deploying the RSS sympathisers in government bodies, including central investigating agencies.

“The Centre has communalised almost all constitutional bodies and have no shame in doing so,” said Nagappan, who was among those who marched to the customs office in Thiruvananthapuram.

CPM politburo member M.A. Baby accused the customs department of getting Swapna to make such a statement under duress since she was never known to make any such revelation when the customs, Enforcement Directorate and National Investigation Agency interrogated her for 32 days.

“These three agencies interrogated Swapna for 32 days. She did not make such a statement then. (This statement) is because of their pressure and threats,” he told the protesters outside the customs office in Thiruvananthapuram.

The customs department has meanwhile served a notice to Sreeramakrishnan asking him to appear before the investigating team on March 12 in connection with the dollar-smuggling case. They had in January recorded the statement of his assistant private secretary K. Ayyappan in connection with the case.