Lypes posting will help sabotage parlour case

KOCHI: Coming down heavily on the UDF Government for appointing P C Iype as Additional Advocate-General, former Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan has said by appointing Iype, an accused in the ice cream parlour case, the government was trying to sabotage investigation into the case. Achuthanandan told reporters here that “The new government wanted to protect someone involved in the ice cream parlour case.” He was inaugurating the valedictory function of the media seminar on ‘Judiciary, Democracy and the Public Interest’, organised by the Media Information and Communication Centre of India, in association with Journalist Initiative, here on Sunday. “Recently a number of incidents came out on how the judiciary is being misused by the executive. It was the relative of a Minister who revealed the recent developments in the ice cream parlour case, the mafia activities associated with it and about giving bribe to the two judges for issuing a favourable verdict in the case. It has also come to light that a former state attorney played middleman in the issue. He was even interrogated by the Special Investigation Team(SIT) probing the case.However when the new government came to power, the prime accused in the case became a Minister. Another accused, who is allegedly the middleman for influencing judges, was appointed the new Additional Advocate General. This shows that the government will do anything to sabotage cases,” Achuthanandan said. Achuthanandan said that there was an attempt to portray him as a revengeful person when R Balakrishna Pillai imprisoned  in the Idamalayar case. “What was my mistake? Filing a case against a corrupt person and following it up? I’m going ahead with a case in the palmolein issue. It’s a weakness of the judiciary that these cases take decades to complete. However, I go ahead without fail,” he said. “The intervention by the Supreme Court in the recent times helped in a major move against corruption. At times, the judiciary performs the role of the executive in observing and monitoring the investigation into certain cases,” Achuthanandan said, referring to the 2G Spectrum corruption case. Former Ombudsman Justice M R Hariharan Nair presided over the function. Journalist P Rajan spoke.