Senior lawyers K. Jaju Babu and T. Asaf Ali were appointed as the Advocate General and the Director General of Prosecution (DGP), respectively, of the Kerala government on Monday.
The appointments were made at the first Cabinet meeting of the United Democratic Front (UDF) government led by Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan.
Mr. Babu, who was designated as Senior Advocate of the Kerala High Court in 2013, was earlier the legal advisor to the Governor of Kerala. He had also served as the counsel for the Chancellor of Universities in Kerala for 15 years, and represented several government agencies before the High Court.
T. Asaf Ali, Director General of Prosecution, Kerala.
Mr. Ali had earlier served as the DGP during the tenure of the Oommen Chandy government.
Mr. Ali had appeared in the Enrica Lexie case, in which two fishermen were killed by Italian mariners, and the Sooryanelli sexual exploitation case. He had also appeared in a series of politically sensitive cases, including the petition seeking a CBI probe by the mother of Ariyil Shukoor, an activist of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) who was allegedly killed by CPI(M) workers.
Mr. Ali, a former president of the Indian Lawyers Congress Kerala High Court unit, had also moved the Kerala High Court seeking CBI probes in the politically significant SNC Lavalin case involving former Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, the Shuhaib murder case in Mattannur, and the Periya twin murder cases in which CPI(M) workers were allegedly involved.