TN Speaker says he was 'threatened by central agency's middleman for 3 months'

Chennai: Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker M Appavu on Saturday claimed that he was threatened allegedly by a person professing proximity to a central investigating agency for three months.

Declining to go into the details of the issue, the Speaker made the comment while reacting to the arrest of an official of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in Madurai on Friday by the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption on a charge of bribery.

The arrest only indicated the way 'things have been going on' in the central investigative agencies, he said.

'I learned about the arrest of the ED official through the media. This shows how the central agencies, especially the CBI, ED, and Income Tax, target the politicians and businessmen in the non-BJP-ruled states through their intermediaries,' Appavu told reporters in Tirunelveli.

He alleged that he was also subjected to threats by a person claiming to be either close to or representing a central investigative agency, the Speaker said.

'He has been issuing threats to me for three months in the name of a central agency. I had to warn him not to try the trick on me as I am straightforward and that God will take care of me,' Appavu said.

'I told the broker that if he could stoop down to threaten a farmer like me, then what would be the plight of other people,' he added.

The middleman had even told him to go underground and change his mobile number. 'But I firmly declined,' the Speaker said.

Going by Friday's arrest of the ED official and what transpired to him, he would say that the intermediaries initially issued threats, then negotiated and finally served notice if the person concerned declined to yield.

The Enforcement Directorate officer Ankit Tiwari was arrested for demanding and accepting a bribe of Rs 20 lakh from a government employee.

Meanwhile, BJP state chief K Annamalai, told reporters in Thoothukudi that the entire department should not be blamed for the mistake of an individual.

'Such an arrest for taking a bribe is not a peculiar case. Similar arrests were made in Rajasthan, West Bengal and Delhi. The DVAC officials set a trap and caught him. But the entire Enforcement Directorate cannot be blamed for a single man's mistake,' Annamalai said.

He sought to know whether the entire Tamil Nadu police department could be blamed if a cop committed a mistake.