Following the deep-sea fishing deal controversy, Kerala Shipping and Inland Navigation Corporation (KSINC) Managing Director and IAS officer Prasanth Nair has landed into deeper trouble. However, this time it is for alleged unprofessional conduct.
In the latest controversy, Kochi-based journalist KP Pravitha shared screenshots of the chat between Prasanth and her. Pravitha sent a message to Prasanth regarding the deep-sea fishing controversy, the latter responded with a WhatsApp sticker. Pravitha told the officer it is not meant to harm him but only wanted to know what he had to say. However, he responded by sending an obscene sticker.
Pravitha was shocked by his reply and asked him what kind of response is this. However, he responded with another sticker. Appalled by his response, the reporter replied, “Never expected such an obscene response from a person holding a responsible government post. I will be reporting it to the concerned authorities.” She added that Prasanth must first learn how to treat women.
After Pravitha said that she would be reporting to concerned authorities, she got a response saying that this is a nice way of extracting news. There was a follow-up message where the sender said that journalists are compared to scavengers. Soon, the stickers were deleted. The Malayalam media company where Pravitha worked published a story on this matter, but apparently, it doesn’t end there.
Following this controversy, Nair’s wife Lekshmy Prasanth revealed that she had sent those stickers instead of Prasanth. Lekshmy shared a post on her Facebook revealing the incident. “I am posting this because it was me who replied to this chat that came to my phone while Prashanth was having lunch. My attempt is to keep Prashanth away from phone and news as much as possible to keep his mind calm. Just to get in quick and not respond. So far being a good boy and quiet,” Lekshmy said in a social media post.
“This is not a place where an author decides whether a person should react to news or not. I know that Prashanth, including senior writers of the media company, has said that he will not respond to the media. Most journalists are the ones who understand that. A disciplined government official will say what he has to say through documents to those who need to say,” she said.
Lekshmy continued, “Understand that I dealt with this gentleman’s intention well who made many calls, messages and “video calls” from unknown numbers to different names. The author who understood that the thing wouldn’t work when he only got stickers is changing the track.”
Lekshmy went on to add that the whole thing was to create news called ‘sex chat’ by the writer who usually described a sticker as pornography by making a video call. “Actually, I just wanted to take the call and say two things,” she said. Lekshmy also said that there is proof that the screenshot printed by the Malayalam news agency was edited as the video calls by the writer was edited and changed.
She said that the reporter was creating a nuisance when the reporter called again and continued disturbed him. “Prashanth blocked him by grabbing the phone and messaging him as “wrong person and wrong tactics”. I unblocked again saying that it can only be blocked after having punch dialogue and I gave my regular dialogue for the last punch. I don't want to see their threats without any reason, thanks to Prashanth who stopped me saying it was a full quotation and tried to delete everything. Otherwise, these screenshots wouldn’t have been shown,” she said.
Lekshmy added that nobody at the Malayalam news agency called Prashanth or her to ask the truth before publishing the story. She said that they must call the office for official matters. “If you say you don’t respond, don’t call from different numbers under false names. Feminism is being protected by coming under this post and abusing me, cancelling even my personality and making obscene comments,” she said in her post.
