The arrest of a self-styled antique dealer who claimed to possess artefacts such as the staff of Moses and two of the 30 silver coins for which Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus has triggered a wider controversy over his purported links with a Congress leader and former police officers.

Monson Mavunkal was arrested in Kochi on Sunday in a cheating case, lodged on the basis of a joint complaint that six of his alleged victims had sent to chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan claiming they had been swindled out of Rs 10 crore.

Since then, in separate media comments, some complainants have alleged paying Mavunkal at a time state Congress president K. Sudhakaran was in the house, or handing over cash on the premises of senior police officer (now retired) G. Surendran.

Social media pictures have also emerged showing Mavunkal with retired police officer Loknath Behera and former chief secretary Jiji Thomson.

Sudhakaran, Surendran and Thomson have denied any knowledge of Mavunkal’s business dealings.

Mavunkal claimed to possess a piece of Jesus’s attire, the throne of Tipu Sultan, the title deed of the Mysore Palace and a walking stick used by Kerala social reformer Sree Narayana Guru, among other artefacts. All these are suspected to be fake.

The six complainants said they had parted with their money after being told that Mavunkal had huge sums of foreign exchange withheld under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (Fema) and therefore needed some cash.

According to their complaint, Mavunkal had produced a purported document from an international bank to show his money was caught up in legal wrangles over Fema. The complainants say they paid him between June 2017 and November 2020.

“Sudhakaran was at his place when I gave him (Mavunkal) Rs 25 lakh on November 22, 2018,” one of the complainants, Shameer MT, told reporters.

Sudhakaran told a news conference in Kannur: “I knew Monson (Mavunkal) as a doctor whom I visited six or seven times to have a skin issue treated. But I have nothing to do with his business.”

Asked why he would consult a quack, he shot back: “There was nothing to show he was a fraud. There were plenty of luxury cars in his compound and I was told he had historic antiques.”

A native of Cherthala in neighbouring Alappuzha district, Mavunkal had started off by manufacturing plastic chairs but soon began presenting himself as an antique dealer and “cosmetologist”.

He allegedly used “doctor” before his name, and many took him to be a dermatologist.

Yaqoob Purayil, another complainant, said he had handed over Rs 25 lakh to Mavunkal after “being taken to” the Thrissur residence of Surendran when he was a deputy inspector-general.

“I was taken to the DIG’s place and then handed over Rs 25 lakh to him (Mavunkal). But I don’t know whether the DIG was involved,” he said.

Surendran denied any knowledge of such financial dealings. “I first met him when I was Kochi police commissioner in 2019 at an awareness campaign against drugs. He said he had a collection of antiques. I have known him since then but have absolutely no connection with his financial dealings,” the retired officer said.

Jiji Thomson said he and Mavunkal were patrons of the Pravasi Malayali Federation. “That’s how I met him,” Thomson told a channel.

Mavunkal’s tall claims about his purported antique collection were widely reported in the local media but no one seems to have publicly questioned their authenticity.