india

Updated: Jun 26, 2019 19:58 IST

The Mumbai police on Wednesday issued a lookout notice against Binoy Kodiyeri, the eldest son of Kerala CPI(M) state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, in connection with a rape case filed by a former employee of a dance bar.

Mumbai DCP Manjunath Shinde has confirmed that the police have issued a lookout notice and all airports have been alerted.

“Our team went to Kerala but they could not locate the person concerned. There are chances he may slip out of the country. So we have taken precautions,” he said.

Binoy was booked for rape and breach of trust and has been absconding for more than ten days since the case was filed against him in Mumbai’s Oshiwara police station.

A Mumbai police team came to Kerala last week but Binoy, who was then in Kannur, had given them the slip. Later he filed an anticipatory bail plea in Mumbai which will be taken up on Thursday.

In her complaint to Mumbai police on June 13, the 32-year-old woman said Binoy had been sexually exploiting her for years and that she has a nine-year-old son out of this union. The woman who was a former bar dancer in Dubai said Binoy had promised that he would marry her but it turned out to be a lie. She also did not know that he went on to marry someone else in Kerala later, she said in her complaint.

But Binoy denied the allegations and accused her of blackmail but admitted he knew the woman when he worked in Dubai. Then she challenged him to undergo a paternity test to prove his innocence and released more evidence to buttress her claim. She said Binoy had rented a house for her in Mumbai and they were living like a married couple for many years. She also said he threatened to kidnap the son if she filed a police complaint.

As the issue came to light, the CPI(M) leader Balakrishnan had expressed his desire to quit the party post but the CPM’s central leadership asked him to continue, but with a strict rider not to interfere with the ongoing probe. People close to his family said efforts are on to broker a settlement between the two.

Earlier, Binoy claimed that the woman in question sought Rs five crore and filed the case when he denied this.

While the issue triggered a political storm in Kerala, writer and social commentator O Abdullha invited Binoy to take to Islam to get out of the present mess. On his Facebook page, he said Islam allowed polygamy under certain conditions and even actor Dharmendra had embraced Islam to marry his erstwhile co-star Hema Malini. Interestingly, the former dance bar employee who turned against Binoy is a Muslim.

Last week, Balakrishnan had called a press conference and said he couldn’t take responsibility for his son’s actions and that he came to know about the incident only recently. But the woman claimed that their relation was ten-year-old and Balakrishnan’s wife (Binoy’s mother) Vinodini Balakrishnan had met her.