Cops to probe DMK legislator's 'smuggling links'

The Tamil Nadu government on Wednesday ordered an investigation by the police crime branch's criminal investigation department into the alleged involvement of ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam legislator C Shanmugam in sandalwood smuggling, thus ending the month-long controversy over the issue.

Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, in a statement in Madras, said he wanted to take action soon after The Hindu carried a report in this regard last month. However, when he tried thrice to contact its editor, Mr Ravi, over phone to ascertain the facts, the latter avoided talking to him.

Karunanidhi said that when newsmen later asked him about the report, he had told them that neither the state government nor the crime branch police had received any report suggesting a probe by the forest department. When The Hindu asserted that it stood by its report, he had decided to call for the files from the forest department.

A letter dated February 18, found in the file, was not sent to the government but it threw light on the arrest of two partymen in connection with sandalwood smuggling and their confessional statement indicting the Tirupattur legislator.

After going through the letter, he had ordered the probe, the chief minister clarified.

The report about the DMK legislator's involvement in sandalwood smuggling, which appeared in The Hindu, kicked off a controversy with Karunanidhi stating that the report was carried under a headline which ended with a question mark. Such headlines were given only in yellow journals and it was not in accordance with the traditions of the newspaper, he had said.

Subsequently, when the issue was raised at the DMK state conference in Salem on June 27, a visibly annoyed Karunanidhi dismissed the newspaper report as baseless and alleged that a conspiracy was on in The Hindu against his government.

At a same press conference, when a reporter asked whether the government would order a probe on the basis of the Hindu report, Karunanidhi had shot back saying whatever was reported in The Hindu could not be taken as a ''Vedic injunction''.

UNI