Thiruvananthapuram,  A day after Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan defended his former principal secretary M. Sivasankar, who was jailed in the gold smuggling case, the Congress on Thursday criticised him and said it was now clear that 'he was scared of Sivasankar'.

"It's now clear that the office of Vijayan was the hub of undesirable activities like gold smuggling, corruption and other anti-social activities and the 'leader' of it is being defended by Vijayan. Sivasankar is an accused in the gold smuggling case and was behind bars. Another accused in the same case - Swapna Suresh -- recently revealed what he was doing. And still Vijayan continues to defend him and that's because Vijayan fears Sivasankar," said V.D. Satheesan, the Leader of Opposition, Kerala Assembly.

An autobiography of Sivasankar released last week created a furore, in which he said that 'he has done nothing to help Swapna in any manner'.

Hurt by this remark Swapna said that "all what I know, he also knows", and they were the best of friends. She added that he helped her in getting a plush job, in escaping to Bengaluru in July 2020, when the gold smuggling case first surfaced.

She also pointed out that it was Sivasankar, who was the master brain behind two of her audio clips that came out, one when she was on the run and second one when she was in custody.

It was on Wednesday that Vijayan, who was facing the media after 137 days, defended the contents of Sivasankar's book. "The book is critical of the way media and various national agencies viewed that case. And it's quite natural you (media) are upset with that. The victims of his writings are upset and it is quite natural that they will hit back," said Vijayan.

To repeated questions whether the government gave permission to Sivasankar to write the book, he said he will look into it.

Satheesan said Vijayan should come clean on whether permission was given to Sivasankar to write the autobiography.

"Vijayan very well knows that if Sivasankar was to divulge things, the worst affected would be Vijayan and that's why he is blindly supporting Sivasankar," added Satheesan.