Solar scam accused get 3-year jail term

CHENNAI/THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A court in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore on Thursday sentenced Saritha Nair, prime accused in what was known as the 2013 Kerala solar scam, to three years’ jail.

The judicial magistrate’s court held Saritha, her husband Biju Radhakrishnan and their manager C Ravi, guilty of cheating four persons of ₹45 lakh after promising to set up wind mills about 10 years ago. All three were sent to jail for three years.

The crime branch of the Tamil Nadu police had booked the three after they collected ₹26 lakh from a Coimbatore industrialist promising him to provide imported wind mills. Three more persons were cheated of ₹19 lakh, and later police filed two separate cases against them.

The court found them guilty of cheating (under Section 120 of the Indian Penal Code) and criminal conspiracy (Section 120 B of the IPC). The three accused were also fined ₹10,000 each.

The couple and the manager were arrested in 2009 but they got bail after a week. Police had filed a charge sheet in 2009, and the trial began in 2016. In Tamil Nadu, three more cases are pending against the couple.

In Kerala, at least two dozen cases of cheating are pending against them. The couple had in 2010 formed a fictitious company, Team Solar.

The “solar scam”, as the case was known in Kerala, had rocked the then UDF government headed by Oommen Chandy after reports surfaced in June, 2013 that some of his staff were involved in alleged cheating of several persons of crores of rupees by Saritha and her husband by offering solar panel solutions.

A judicial commission, set up by the UDF government to probe the allegations, in its report submitted in 2017 had found that Chandy and four of his personal staff had “assisted” Saritha and her company, Team Solar, in enabling them to cheat customers.