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Police make headway in Santhosh Madhavan case

— Photo: Vipinchandran

In police net: Santhosh Madhavan, third from left, back row, being produced before the media at the Police Club in Kochi on Tuesday.

KOCHI: Ending a couple of days’ confusion, the State police on Tuesday managed to make much headway in the controversial godman’s case with his arrest and registering of as many as four cases.

It all started with media reports on an Interpol lookout notice for Santhosh Madhavan on the charge of cheating Serafin Edwin of four lakh dirhams. However, the police did not act at that point, except conducting searches at Santhitheeram, a guesthouse run by Santhosh Madhavan on SRM Road here.

Commenting on this, Vinson M. Paul, Inspector-General of Police, Ernakulam Range, said he got an official communication from the Assistant Director, Interpol, New Delhi, that a case against Santhosh Madhavan was registered at Dubai and that he may not be arrested here. But there was another entry for Santhosh Madhavan, who was accused of keeping weapons during the Mumbai blasts. If he was found, the Interpol direction was to arrest him and hand him over to the Mumbai police, Mr. Paul said.

There were also allegations of Santhosh Madhavan possessing three passports, one in his original name and two under the name Amruta Chaitanya. Clarifying this, City Police Commissioner Manoj Abraham said the accused did that legally and no case could be registered against him on that.

He initially travelled abroad using his first passport and committed cheating during that period. The Interpol notice cited the number of his first passport. So he surrendered that passport and applied for a new one under his new name, after taking all legal steps for name change. He surrendered this passport as well, reporting it to be damaged, and applied for a new passport. While the number of the first passport was quoted in the second one, it was not included in the third one. And he managed to throw the investigators off the track, Mr. Abraham said.

Asked about the police uniform found in his residence, the accused told the police that it belonged to Ashok who was Circle Inspector with the Kochi City Control Room. He left it after it became dirty and it remained there, as the police officer died in an accident a year ago.

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