CBI move baffles Congress leadership

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The state Congress leaders are keeping their fingers crossed as the CBI’s second interrogation of G.Karthikeyan has come as a real surprise and caused them a major concern. What surprised them was not the CBI interrogation per se but the way it was conducted.A summon by the CBI to its office in Chennai was not anticipated by many top leaders of the Congress. This has raised many curious eyebrows in the State leadership of the party since at least a few believe that something serious is going to happen.``Taking a statement from a leader and summoning a leader should be treated differently.A summon cannot be taken lightly,’’ was how a senior Congress leader reacted to this. The leaders are confused over how to react if anything comes against the party in the SNC-Lavalin case.The case was a handy weapon for the Congress till now to attack the CPM in general and Pinarayi Vijayan in particular.But now the Congress leaders are in a fix over what stand to be taken if Karthikeyan too is implicated. Going by the indications, the leaders believe that there would be some adverse comments against Karthikeyan.However, the more embarrassing aspect is that the CBI has interrogated Karthikeyan twice based on the observations made by the court. Hence if Karthikeyan is implicated, there will be accusations against the Congress leadership that they had lobbied to exclude the name of Karthikeyan from the CBI chargesheet.The CPM had levelled the same allegation when the CBI had filed their chargesheet in the court. However, Karthikeyan beg to differ on all these fears. ``There is nothing extraordinary in it. The CBI is the investigating agency and they wanted me to report at their office.They had some doubts and wanted my clarifications. Right from the beginning I had maintained that I was ready to cooperate with any kind of investigation.Since I am a law abiding citizen, I appeared before them. There is nothing unusual in it,’’ Karthikeyan told `Express'