THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The National Investigation Agency has reached the Secretariat to have a detailed probe into the sensational gold smuggling case. The team led by Vinod, NIA assistant programmer has arrived for collecting evidence relating to the probe. The investigation progresses in the presence of IT secretary Mohammed V Safirulla. The team first examined the server room of the public administration department where the servers which collect CCTV visuals are kept. The team also examined the CCTV visuals of the North Block where the office of the former principal secretary to the chief minister, M Sivasankar situated. The team is also inspecting other CCTV footages.

The NIA team will collect only the required visuals from the server. The visuals from July 2019 will be collected. To NIA’s request for the CCTV visuals the public administration department responded they need 400 TB hard disk to collect the footages. Considering the delay to get the hard disk from abroad the public administration department granted permission to NIA to directly examine the visuals.

During the course of probe the NIA found that the prime convicts of the case Swapna Suresh and Sarith have close connections with M Sivasankar, the former principal secretary to the chief minister. The investigating team examines the CCTV footages in order to confirm the number of visits made by these convicts to the secretariat. The NIA has confirmed that the convicts including Swapna Suresh have visited the office of different ministers. So they are also examining those visuals.