The Kerala Assembly on Monday disqualified ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) legislator Antony Raju, following his conviction and a three-year jail sentence in a sensational case dating back to 1990. The case, which involved the tampering of a key piece of evidence – an Australian man's underwear containing drugs – finally reached its conclusion after 36 years, ending the political career of the former Transport Minister.
The Bizarre Case of the Altered Underwear
The saga began on April 4, 1990, when an Australian national, Andrew Salvatore Cervelli, landed at Thiruvananthapuram airport from Mumbai. Customs officials found two packets of hashish, weighing 55 grams and 6.5 grams, concealed in his underwear. The garment was seized and produced as evidence before a judicial magistrate court in Thiruvananthapuram.
At the time, Antony Raju was a junior lawyer practising in Thiruvananthapuram and served as counsel for the accused. A district sessions court later convicted Cervelli, sentencing him to 10 years in prison and a fine of Rs 1 lakh.
The case took a strange turn when Cervelli appealed to the Kerala High Court. He argued that the lower court had ignored his request for a "practical test" – to see if the seized underwear actually fit him. The High Court registrar conducted the test and noted that "in spite of repeated attempts," Cervelli could not pull the underwear up his thighs. Consequently, the High Court set aside his conviction in 1991, and he returned to Australia a free man.
The Unraveling of a Lawyer's Plot
While Cervelli walked free, the court suspected foul play, observing a strong possibility that the evidence had been planted. The High Court vigilance wing informed the Thiruvananthapuram district judge that the underwear involved in the case had been substituted.
An investigation revealed a plot orchestrated by the defence lawyer himself. The charge sheet, submitted in 2006, found that Antony Raju, aided by a court clerk named K Jose, had tampered with the material evidence. As the accused's lawyer, Raju had got the garment released from the court's custody.
On August 9, 1990, clerk Jose handed over the underwear to Raju. The key evidence remained in Raju's possession for four months. During this period, he allegedly altered the garment – making it smaller so it would not fit the accused – and returned it to the court on December 5, 1990, as if it were the original evidence.
Forensic analysis later confirmed the tampering. Experts found a restitched size label (85-90 cm) on a smaller piece of fabric, patches of lighter colour and uneven wear, and frayed fibres in specific folded regions.
Long Road to Conviction and Political Fallout
Despite an FIR being registered in 1994 under IPC sections related to cheating and disappearance of evidence, the case saw prolonged delays. A chargesheet was filed in a magistrate court in 2013, but proceedings stalled. Raju and Jose even managed to get the proceedings quashed by the High Court in 2022.
The turning point came in November 2024, when the Supreme Court, acting on a public interest litigation, restored the proceedings. The apex court directed the magistrate court to conclude the trial within a year, noting the case was nearly two decades old.
On January 3, 2025, the Judicial First Class Magistrate Court in Thiruvananthapuram convicted both Antony Raju and K Jose. A crucial piece of evidence was the testimony of an investigating officer, who recounted that Raju had allegedly boasted during the initial trial that a "bomb" had been planted in the case which would "explode" once the trial was over.
Following the conviction and three-year sentence, the Kerala Assembly Secretariat issued an order disqualifying Antony Raju as an MLA with immediate effect, citing constitutional provisions. The court, however, granted both convicts bail for one month to enable them to appeal the verdict.
Antony Raju, who served as the Transport Minister in the first half of the current LDF government's tenure, was elected as the Thiruvananthapuram MLA in 2021 from the Janadhipathya Kerala Congress. His political journey, which began with his election from Trivandrum West in 1996, has now been abruptly halted by a case from his early legal career.
