Tampering With Evidence: How Resizing An Undergarment Led To Disqualification Of A Kerala MLA

Last Updated:January 06, 2026, 14:45 IST

On January 2, a magistrate court in Nedumangad, found Antony Raju guilty of tampering with the size of the underwear in which 61.5 grams of hashish had been concealed.

Raju, the second accused in the case, had served as Kerala’s transport minister in the present LDF government from May 20, 2021, to December 24, 2023. (Image: PTI File)

The resizing of a piece of underwear nearly 35 years ago has proved ruinous for a 71-year-old Kerala legislator and former minister, Antony Raju, bringing an abrupt end to a political career that spanned almost five decades. The act was neither trivial nor naive: the innerwear was a crucial piece of material evidence in a narcotics case.

On January 2, 2026, a first-class magistrate court in Nedumangad, Thiruvananthapuram, found Raju guilty of tampering with the size of the underwear in which 61.5 grams of hashish had been concealed. The alleged manipulation was intended to show that the garment did not belong to his client, an Australian national, Andrew Salvatore Cervelli. The court sentenced Raju to three years of imprisonment.

The court also sentenced K Jose, a court clerk and the first accused in the case, to three years in jail for collaborating in the crime. Both Raju and Jose were granted bail for a month to enable them to appeal against the verdict.

Antony Raju: The leader and the minister

Raju, the second accused in the case, had served as Kerala’s transport minister in the present LDF government from May 20, 2021, to December 24, 2023. At the time of the incident, he was practising as a lawyer in Thiruvananthapuram.

According to a notification issued by the Kerala legislature secretariat on January 5, Raju stands disqualified as a legislator following his conviction in a criminal case. He was the lone MLA of CPI(M) ally Janadhipathya Kerala Congress, representing the Thiruvananthapuram Assembly constituency. He contested Assembly elections five times from the constituency as an LDF candidate from 1991 onwards and was elected twice.

What was the case?

The case dates back to April 9, 1990, when Cervelli was intercepted at the Thiruvananthapuram airport and found in possession of two packets of hashish concealed in the pocket of his dark blue underwear. The prosecution produced the innerwear as a key piece of evidence, and in 1992, the sessions court in Thiruvananthapuram sentenced Cervelli to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment.

In 1993, however, the Kerala High Court acquitted Cervelli after his counsel argued that the underwear produced in court custody – the primary material evidence – was “too small" to belong to the accused, who was described as stout and fat. Following his acquittal, Cervelli left India.

A statement from Australia

The case took a dramatic turn in 1996 when Cervelli was arrested in Australia in connection with a murder case. During interrogation, he reportedly told Australian authorities that his family had bribed a court clerk and others in India to tamper with evidence, enabling him to escape conviction in a serious drug case.

This information was later shared with the Central Bureau of Investigation through Interpol. Although the Kerala High Court ordered the case to be reopened in 2002, it made little progress and was eventually classified as an unsolved case. In 2005, after TP Senkumar took charge as Inspector General of Police, Southern Range, the case was reinvestigated.

How was it done?

When Cervelli’s personal belongings were released from court custody in August 1990, the underwear was included among the items and was returned only in December that year. Raju had signed the relevant documents acknowledging receipt of the materials. When the underwear was originally packed, sealed, and produced before the court in April 1990, Jose, the first accused, was posted at the court.

The investigation found that Raju, who appeared for Cervelli, had taken the underwear from the magistrate court’s custody with Jose’s assistance. According to the prosecution, Raju returned the underwear four months later, shortly before Cervelli approached the High Court.

Forensic evidence played a crucial role in establishing tampering. The forensic report pointed to the cutting of the label and its re-stitching onto a fragment of the same label, supporting the inference that the garment had been altered. The court concluded that these changes could only have occurred during the period when the underwear was in the unauthorised custody of the second accused.

Although police filed the chargesheet in the magistrate court in 2013, the trial was repeatedly deferred. The prosecution charged Raju and Jose with criminal conspiracy, tampering with and destruction of evidence, fabrication of false evidence, misconduct by a public servant, and fabrication of forged documents.

Incidentally, a similar episode was portrayed in the 1991 Malayalam film Anavaal Mothiram, starring present Union Minister Suresh Gopi and Sreenivasan as police officers, which features a courtroom scene involving the “shrinking" of an accused foreign national’s underwear in a drug case.

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