Chennai: Former Tamil Nadu agriculture minister S S Krishnamoorthy, who was arrested on charges of abetment of suicide, was sent to 15-day judicial custody by a local court. S Muthukumarasamy, an engineer working in the agriculture department, flung himself in front of a train in Tirunelveli in February, allegedly after being pressured by some power centres to manipulate a recruitment process.
Krishnamoorthy was dropped from the state cabinet on March 7 after the engineer's suicide. Muthukumarasamy's death was attributed to pressure from chief engineer Senthil Kumar, who allegedly wanted him to collect money from seven driver recruits to fill the minister's pocket. Senthil, too, was arrested along with the former minister on Saturday.
Sustained pressure from opposition parties for a CBI probe kept the heat on the state police and the government even after the case was transferred from the Tirunelveli police to CB-CID. Ever since he was stripped of the party posts and dropped from the ministry, Krishnamoorthy had stayed put in Chennai.
A recent interview he gave to a section of media perhaps hastened his arrest as he had said that his party leader, J Jayalalithaa, was aware of “everything that had happened.”
