As his party now eyes LS polls in Kerala, KITEX Group chief takes fresh salvo against CPM MLA

Twenty20 party chief and Managing Director of garment major KITEX group Sabu M Jacob, who has been at loggerheads with the CPI(M) in Kerala since it came to power in 2021, on Sunday said he would ensure Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s daughter Veena goes to jail if he is arrested.

“If there is a situation which leads to my arrest, I would make sure the CM’s beloved daughter is behind bars. This is not a bomb that Swapna Suresh (the key accused in the 2020 gold smuggling scandal) possesses. Sabu Jacob also possesses one and I want to tell CPI(M) leaders, their legislator (PV Sreenijin) and the district leadership that the one I have is an atom bomb,” he said at a public meeting in Kizhakkambalam, one of the four gram panchayats that his party won in the 2021 panchayat polls.

Sreenijin, who is the CPI(M) legislator from Kunnathunad, had filed a complaint against Sabu based on which the Kerala Police has booked him under provisions of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The Kerala High Court stayed his arrest on February 2.

The KITEX MD has repeatedly locked horns with Sreenijin, who is the son-in-law of former Chief Justice of India, K G Balakrishnan. In another incident last year, the police had booked Sabu following a complaint from Sreenijin, who alleged that the businessman had walked off the stage when the MLA was slated to inaugurate an event.

It was in 2015 that Sabu forayed into politics, fighting local body elections through his company’s CSR wing – Twenty20 – in Kizhakkambalam, where KITEX headquarters is located. Stunning the CPI(M) and Congress, Twenty20 had won the panchayat polls from Kizhakkambalam.

Five years later, in the 2020 local body elections, Twenty20 won four gram panchayats.

In the 2021 Assembly