It took just about 10 hours. A 28-year-old man named Udayakumar was taken into custody on suspicion of theft at Sreekanteswaram in Thiruvananthapuram district by the Fort police at 1.30 pm in 2005. By 11.30 pm, he was declared dead. He had suffered a massive haemorrhage.

The Crime Branch investigation report showed that, in the hours before his death, he was made to lie on his back on a bench and was repeatedly bastinadoed on the soles of his feet with a cane. A pipe was rolled down his thighs-- all this because he had ₹4,020 in his pocket. The police wanted him to confess to stealing the money. The torture went on. His muscles were crushed, and the flesh came off. Relentless corporal torture snuffed out his life. The police had found him with Suresh Kumar, who was wanted in another theft case.

During the trial of the case, the accused — all cops, became 'cunning performers in the witness box' as remarked by a High Court judge. They disowned the earlier statements they had made to the investigating officer. Udayakumar's mother, Prabhavathiamma, could not have watched the case crumbling in front of her eyes. The prosecution witnesses were turning hostile in such a way that the Director General of Prosecution had told the HC that eyewitnesses and police officers exhibited testimonial infidelity to save the accused police personnel. When Prabhavathiamma won an HC order for a CBI probe in 2007, she genuinely hoped that justice would be delivered.

Two decades later, the HC trashed the CBI probe, terming it 'tainted and vitiated'. All the accused have been acquitted. The HC rejected confirmation of the death sentence of K Jithakumar and S V Sreekumar awarded by the CBI Special Court in 2018. Jithakumar, Sreekumar and Soman were the accused No. 1 to 3 in the case and were police constables. Sreekumar and Soman had died earlier.

Going by the court documents, the CBI botched up a case with clear material evidence—the blood-stained GI pipe, presence of blood on the wooden bench and iron cot. While ordering the CBI probe, the HC had stated that further proceedings of the trial court need to be started only after the CBI filed the report. The trial before the sessions court, Thiruvananthapuram, was stayed so that a supplementary/further report could be filed by the CBI. From then on, whatever the CBI did amounted to a violation of the court directive and gross procedural flaws, which eventually paved the way for the accused's acquittal.

After taking over the probe, the CBI had filed a report seeking to report six persons as accused and then another report was filed to include two more as accused in the case. This also included Suresh Kumar, who was the person caught along with Udayakumar. They were arrested and remanded in judicial custody. Then, the CBI filed a petition to tender a pardon to the accused. These applications were filed before the Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM), Ernakulam. A supplementary report was filed before the CJM. In 2010, the CJM tendered pardon to the persons who were earlier arrayed as accused, on condition that they would make a full and true disclosure of the whole of the circumstances and facts within their knowledge relating to the offence, and every other person concerned.

During the trial in the High Court for confirmation of the capital sentence awarded by the CBI special court, the counsel for the accused tore into the procedural irregularities one by one. They laid out a pattern that was hard to miss. The CBI had arrayed witnesses as accused, given assurances and made them approvers. Under threat, they deposed a different version.

P Vijayabhanu, who appeared for Jithakumar (first accused), said that the witnesses whose evidence was relied on to arrive at the finding of guilt had stated a different version before the Additional Sessions Court (Fast Track court -3). S Rajeev, counsel for the fourth accused, contended that the CBI deliberately fabricated evidence to fasten culpability on superior officers for the incident and cited that the failure of the CBI court to evaluate evidence of the witnesses who were examined during the earlier trial was crucial.

Pirappancode Sudheer, another counsel for an accused, said that the CBI was required to file a supplementary report before the trial court in Thiruvananthapuram. Instead, the report was filed before the CJM, Ernakulam. Despite the absence of even a prima facie case, the CBI included various officers as accused, coerced them into falsely deposing that station records were manipulated. Coerced statements formed the sole foundation of the charges levelled by the CBI, the counsel told the court. 

In the final verdict, the HC noted that there cannot be any doubt that the supplementary report after conducting further investigation can be filed only before the court where the case is pending and not before a different court. It also said that the intentional course adopted by the CBI in submitting a final report before the CJM in a matter where further investigation had already been ordered and the trial had been stayed, and then conducting a trial before the court of the Special Judge, CBI, Thiruvananthapuram, wholly unconnected with the earlier proceedings, constituted a fatal irregularity.

Such a procedure, by its very nature, causes serious prejudice to the accused and consequently amounts to a failure of justice, the HC bench noted. According to the HC, CBI was directed to do a re-investigation, not a new investigation, and that the progress of the case could only have been controlled and determined by the Additional Sessions Judge (Fast Track court -3),  Thiruvananthapuram.

The HC also did not accept the statements of the prosecution witnesses presented by the CBI, as they were discredited by their own contradictory accounts in the trial court. For instance, one woman cop, who initially deposed in tune with the police records and did not connect the accused to any torture, shifted her stance to say that she saw the first two accused bring Udayakumar to the station, after she was arraigned as an accused and tendered pardon. "We are compelled to hold that a flawed and tainted investigation has eventually led to the failure of the prosecution case involving the gruesome death of Udayakumar," the HC bench of Justice Raja Vijayaraghavan and K V Jayakumar said.

In defence, the CBI had said that eight officers approached the CBI and requested that they be made approvers, and in return, they would speak the truth. Since the incident took place within the four walls of the office of the Circle Inspector, the prosecution had to rely on the evidence of police officers to bring out the truth, the CBI counsel had said during the trial.