CM Vijayan's top aide Sasi takes legal route in fight with MLA Anvar

Kannur: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's Political Secretary P. Sasi, who faced several allegations from Independent legislator P.V. Anvar - earlier linked to the ruling LDF, on Friday launched a legal battle against him.

Sasi filed two criminal defamation cases at courts in Thalassery and Kannur against Anvar.

The CPI-M leader has decided to take on Anvar on legal grounds after the legislator failed to reply to his lawyer's notice sent to him last month.

It was in September that Anvar first attacked Sasi by alleging he, along with (the then) controversial ADGP, Law and Order, M.R.Ajith Kumar, was engaged in nefarious activities, including supporting gold smuggling.

Then Anvar accused Sasi of engaging in 'benami' deals after the suicide of Kannur Additional District Magistrate Naveen Babu took place last month.

Soon after filing the criminal defamation case on Friday, Sasi said Anvar had been engaged in a free-for-all against him.

"Since I work in the office of CM Vijayan, Anvar has been engaged in attacking the CM and his family, by levelling baseless allegations against me. There is a mafia behind Anvar and their deeds got stuck after the state government started taking strong action," he alleged.

Anvar, in September, said that he met both Vijayan and CPI-M state Secretary M.V. Govindan and handed over a detailed letter against the misdeeds of Sasi, but it was dismissed outright by both Vijayan and Govindan.

Sasi is a political appointee by the party as he is also a state Committee member of the CPI-M and hails from Kannur, the home town of both Vijayan and Govindan. After being kept out from party posts due to a sexual misconduct case, a decade back, he came back to prominence when he was brought into the powerful state committee of the CPI-M in 2022 and then, appointed to the key post of the Political Secretary to Vijayan. Incidentally, it is the second time that Sasi is holding the post, with his first tenure being during E.K.Nayanar’s term as Chief Minister in 1996.