KOCHI: The High court issued strong words of criticism at the precarious way in which the trunk containing the postal votes was saved in the Perinthalmanna Assembly election. The court discerned the issue as very serious and asked for a report from the election commission before jumping on the verdict.

Justice A Badaruddin passed the order for opening the sealed box after which he made the comments. The box containing the postal votes was first found missing but was later recovered from the office of the Joint Registrar of Cooperative Societies, Malappuram.

The votes were torn apart and some packs were opened, the court found while opening the sealed box. The sign of officers is needed before putting these postal votes in the sealed box, which was missing. The court thus came to a decision that many of the votes were later put inside in clear evidence of election tampering.

The LDF candidate KP Muhammed Mustafa made the petition citing election fraud from league candidate Najid Kathapuram who won the constituency with just 38 votes. Due to some technical reason, 340 postal votes were ignored which Mustafa advocates would have ensured his victory.

Meanwhile, league candidate Najeeb Kanthapuram has approached against the move to the supreme court which will be considered on February 27th.