ED asks Kerala police to file a corruption case against Pinarayi Vijayan in the CMRL payments

The Enforcement Directorate has written to Kerala's state police chief asking for a separate first information report under the Prevention of Corruption Act against Pinarayi Vijayan, his daughter T. Veena and his son-in-law P.A. Mohamed Riyas. The letter went out under Section 66(2) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, which lets the agency pass material from a money-laundering file to a police force that can register predicate offences. Vijayan is Leader of the Opposition and a former two-term chief minister. Riyas is a former public works minister.

The file concerns payments from Cochin Minerals and Rutile Ltd, a listed mineral sands company, to Exalogic Solutions, an information-technology firm Veena controlled that later shut. The ED says those payments were booked as IT consultancy and did not match real work. One set of reports puts the sum at Rs 2.78 crore. The agency's own allegation against Vijayan, as carried by multiple Kerala outlets on 8 September, is that he received Rs 3.28 crore through the same channel. The ED cites a statement from P. Suresh Kumar, a former chief financial officer and chief general manager at CMRL, as part of the basis for that figure.

The letter names more than the family. Reports of the dossier list CMRL managing director Sasidharan Kartha, Suresh Kumar and about ten others, for a total of 13 people. The agency wants the state police to examine bribery, kickbacks and abuse of public office. It has already been running a PMLA investigation of its own. Officers searched a rented house in Thiruvananthapuram where Veena was staying with Vijayan in May. They also searched sites in Kozhikode. Veena was questioned after those raids.

Section 66(2) is a procedural hinge. The ED cannot itself try a Prevention of Corruption Act case in the way a state police station can. By handing over a compiled record, it puts the Kerala Police under pressure to register or to explain why it will not. Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala, speaking for the state government, said action would follow procedure and told reporters to wait and watch. That is not a refusal. It is also not a date for an FIR.

The politics are blunt. Vijayan led the CPI(M) government that sat in office while the CMRL payments were made. He now leads the opposition after the 2026 assembly change. An FIR in his name would follow him into that role. Riyas, who is an MLA, is accused in the same papers of moving money onward, including transfers described as heading to Dubai. Veena is described as the person who collected and diverted the funds through Exalogic.

None of those claims has been tested in a criminal court. The company has previously said the payments were commercial. Vijayan's camp has treated the ED case as a political project. What changed on 8 September is not a conviction. It is the formal request that Kerala Police open a corruption case beside the federal money-laundering file.

If the police register the FIR, the next steps are familiar: statements, bank records, and a fight over whether consultancy invoices describe real work. If they delay, the ED letter becomes a campaign document. Either way, the number the agency has chosen to put on the page is Rs 3.28 crore, attributed to Vijayan through his daughter's firm, and the legal instrument is a PMLA information-sharing clause used to force a state case.