Thiruvananthapuram: The policemen at the Fort station in the Kerala capital city conspired too much to save the skin of their killer colleagues. That overkill ultimately gave the CBI the lead to unravel the case.
Wednesday’s court verdict sentencing two police officers to death for killing a 26-year-old man in 2005 comes a decade after the CBI took over the investigation into the case. The central agency had a formidable task at hand when it took over the probe on August 26, 2008.
Everyone in the Kerala police seemed to gang up in favour of their colleagues who were accused of picking Udayakumar from a nearby park and torturing him to death. The victim’s friend and one of the main witnesses, Suresh Kumar, turned hostile.
The CBI sleuths knew they had to batter their way through a weaker point. That point came in the form of a case registered at the Fort police station after Udayakumar was murdered. The police had recorded that Udayakumar and Suresh Kumar were found in the Sreekandeswaram park after 10 pm in a suspicious manner. The crime branch, however, had recorded the time of arrest as 8 pm.
Read more: Udayakumar murder: Two cops get death penalty, others jail
The CBI team which investigated the mismatch succeeded in tracking down the witnesses, who told them that the young man was picked up by the police as early as 2 pm.
The police had recorded the arrest late for a reason. Udayakumar was brutally tortured between 2 pm and 3 pm, medical records had shown. So the police wanted to prove that the young man was taken into custody only late in the evening, after the accused officers had gone home after the day’s duty.
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The strategy, however, backfired. The CBI officers focused their probe on the two officers responsible for recording the first information report in the case. Raveendran and Hiralal were slapped with a case. Within no time, the tough cops began to crack. The officers who had witnessed the inhuman torture testified before the investigators.
The CBI made Raveendran Nair, Hiralal, Thankamani, Sajitha, Sheeja Kumari and George approvers in the case. The team made Suresh Kumar into an accused because he was guaranteed to turn hostile during the trial.
Suresh Kumar now faces the prospect of another CBI case. The court has ordered the CBI to take action against him for turning hostile on the first day of the trial.
The CBI cracked the case in a year. The team leader Pradeep Kumar now heads the agency’s cyber cell in Delhi. He was assisted by Harikrishnan and Prasad.
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