‘CBI probe tainted’: Kerala HC acquits 4 cops convicted for 2005 custody death

KOCHI: The Kerala heights margaret court on wed go down apart the conviction of four police officers for the death of a 28-year-old man picked up for questioning in a theft case in 2005.A bench of justices Raja Vijayaraghavan V and KV Jayakumar acquitted the four officers, Jithakumar K, TK Haridas, T Ajithkumar and EK Sabu, ruling that the prosecution could not establish the charges against them beyond a reasonable doubt.The high court also sharply criticised the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), asserting that its probe in the case was “tainted” and “vitiated”.“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 evidence adduced before the court, if shorn of its taint and illegalities, is not sufficient to hold the accused guilty of the offence,” the division bench said.Udayakumar’s mother Prabhavati, who pursued the case for two decades to seek justice for her son, broke down on Wednesday. “My son was beaten to death by the accused officers for ₹4,000. How can any court grant freedom to such officers? Tomorrow, they will kill more people,” she said, crying.In 2018, a special CBI court had convicted five police personnel for the death of Udayakumar in Thiruvananthapuram. Two of them, Jithakumar K and SV Sreekumar, were sentenced to death. The other three - TK Haridas, T Ajithkumar and EK Sabu - were sentenced to three years in jail.SV Sreekumar, who was sentenced to death, died during the appeal proceedings.According to the prosecution, Udayakumar was picked up by two officers attached to the Fort police station in Thiruvananthapuram from the Sreekandeshwaram Park in the early hours of September 27, 2005, on suspicion of theft.The accused officers had found his explanation for the currency notes in his possession unsatisfactory and allegedly started torturing him, hitting the soles of his feet with a bamboo stick. Another accused officer, who passed away during the trial, kneaded an iron pipe on his thighs, crushing his thigh muscles. He was then taken to the circle inspector’s office where he was stripped and again beaten.Udayakumar died the same day at 11:45 pm at the Government Medical College Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram, triggering massive outrage against the Oomen Chandy government that was in power at the time.CBI said three of the officers fabricated documents to protect the prime accused involved in the torture, creating false entries in the General Diary (GD) and registering a false backdated FIR to support a narrative of fictitious arrest.The case was initially investigated by the state police’s Crime Branch unit and subsequently transferred to the CBI upon the request of the victim’s mother.But the high court was critical of the CBI probe.“The high-handed and wholly illegal procedure adopted by the CBI, of converting an eye witness, who had no real connection with the incident, into an approver; of indiscriminately arraying all witnesses and coercing them at gun-point into becoming approvers; of extracting their assent on the condition that they parrot the CBI’s version of events; of filing applications for tender of pardon before a Court lacking jurisdiction to entertain the same; and of laying a supplementary report before a Court equally devoid of jurisdiction, amounts to nothing short of a tainted and vitiated investigation,” the high court said in its verdict.The bench also underlined that there were “major contradictions” in the testimonies of the prosecution witnesses, most of whom are approvers, accompanied by “glaring investigative defects”.