Madani cries foul as wife is arrested

People’s Democratic Party chairman Abdul Nasser Madani's wife Sufiya was arrested on Thursday after the Kerala high court rejected her plea for anticipatory bail.

Sufiya, the tenth accused in a case of burning a Tamil Nadu state transport bus near Kochi in 2005, was brought before assistant commissioner PM Varghese, the investigating officer. She will appear before the first class judicial magistrate's court in Aluva on Friday. The prosecution argued that two accused and two witnesses had testified against Sufiya.

Home minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said the police had information about Sufiya's links to the accused. "The incident happened during the UDF rule. The investigating officer had come to know of the phone calls (between Sufiya and other accused) then. We don’t know why the first charge sheet dropped the names," he said.

The fresh charge sheet, filed last Friday, has Thadiyantavide Nazeer, the LeT agent now in the custody of Bangalore police, as the prime accused.

Madani said the charge sheet was the result of a high-level conspiracy. "Those who gave their statement (against Sufiya) and the officers who recorded it should take narcoanalysis tests. Then the truth will come out," he said.