Kerala BJP president K. Surendran on Thursday accepted he had received a call from a person who pointed fingers at him in a payoff scandal but denied paying a rival to join the NDA.

“I’m not saying I did not get that call. But in today’s world audio clips can be edited,” Surendran said, breaking his silence a day after the controversy broke.

He sought a probe into the audiotape.

However, a BJP veteran, P.P. Mukundan, called for the leadership to “reveal what really happened and remove confusion”, and sought an investigation on the ground that “the voice recording we heard is about agreeing to give money”.

Praseetha Azhikode, treasurer of the Janadhipathya Rashtriya Party (JRP), who had on Wednesday accused Surendran of agreeing to pay Rs 10 lakh to her now-suspended party leader C.K. Janu to get her to return to the NDA, denied the tape was “edited”.

In the audio, leaked on Wednesday, a woman tells a man that another woman who had sought Rs 10 crore was ready to accept Rs 10 lakh and “the Bathery seat” to abandon the CPM and be present “at Amit Shah’s programme on the seventh”.

The man says “we can give it when she comes in person on the seventh” and later says: “Let her come on the sixth, I shall give it.”

Praseetha had on Wednesday said hers was the female voice and Surendran’s the male voice, and that the tape was leaked by a group within her party.

The JRP had switched allegiance from Left Democratic Front and returned to the NDA before the April 6 Assembly polls, and Janu had unsuccessfully contested from Sultan Bathery. Janu was on the dais during Shah’s March 7 event in Thiruvananthapuram. She was suspended by her party on the suspicion of trading votes after she polled far fewer votes than expected.

Janu has denied Praseetha’s allegations and threatened to lodge a police complaint.

Surendran on Thursday tried to portray the controversy as an attack on an Adivasi leader, alluding to Janu’s career as a tribal rights activist before she turned to electoral politics.

“You have all the freedom to accuse me. (But) based on someone’s audio clip, you are accusing a social worker who has fought for Kerala’s Adivasis and Dalits,” he said.

“You can accuse the BJP of anything but a person like Janu — why is Janu being attacked so often? Is it because she is an Adivasi leader?”

He said the BJP had taken care of Janu’s campaign expenses since she was an NDA candidate. “But that was purely legal,” he said.

Surendran called for a detailed investigation, implying the charge was absurd: “Think about it, from Rs 10 crore the amount falls to Rs 10 lakh....”

Praseetha threw a dare: “Let him go and complain. Janu said yesterday that she would lodge a complaint, now Surendran is saying it’s fake.”

She added: “It was not edited at all. If I had wanted to edit it, I could have removed the portion where I asked for money.”

While the female voice is heard seeking money for herself too in the audio, Praseetha said on Wednesday she had sought the money for party work.

Praseetha said Surendran had visited Horizon Hotel in Thiruvananthapuram where she, Janu and other JRP leaders were staying on March 7.

“Janu was at the hotel on the seventh. But when Surendran came in we were asked to stay outside (the room). They (Janu and Surendran) settled everything,” she said. “Janu admitted to me she did collect the money.”

Mukundan had been the only BJP leader to speak on the audio controversy on Wednesday, suggesting an “internal probe” and punishment for the “guilty”.

On Thursday, Mukundan said it was time the party’s core committee met and discussed the payoff and money-laundering scandals haunting the BJP following its rout in the state polls.

Kerala police recently questioned several BJP leaders after carjackers robbed an RSS worker of what police sources believe was Rs 3.5 crore in unaccounted cash, although the FIR mentions only Rs 25 lakh.

Surendran on Thursday iterated that the BJP had nothing to do with the money or the robbery.

“I feel the BJP core committee should reveal what really happened and remove the confusion in the minds of party workers,” Mukundan said.

A leader from the old school who is against splurging money on elections and disapproved of Surendran’s chopper rides during the campaign, Mukundan suggested the audio clip should be investigated.

“The state president is saying there are no links with the hawala money. But the voice recording we heard is about agreeing to give money (to Janu),” he said.