Udayakumar case: CBI to seek fresh trial

Arjun Raghunath
The New Indian Express
29 Sep 2010

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With the CBI finding serious lacuna in the charge-sheet filed by the Crime Branch in the Udayakumar custodial death case, it will be seeking a fresh trial in the case.
The CBI would soon file a request in the High Court seeking a fresh trial in the case at the Chief Judicial Magistrate Court in Kochi, highly placed sources told 'Express.’
While ordering a CBI probe into the case in 2007, the High Court had stayed a trial that was going on in the Fast Track Court in Thiruvananthapuram on the basis of a chargesheet filed by the Crime Branch.
''Since there are glaring differences in the charges framed by the CBI as well as in the list of accused, compared to that of the chargesheet filed by the Crime Branch, a fresh trail in the case is essential,’’ said sources.
In a bid to plug the loopholes, the CBI had already recorded the statements of all the eight approvers in the case under Section 164 of CrPC before the Judicial First Class Magistrate Court - IV in Thiruvananthapuram. It is learnt that Suresh Kumar, a key eye-witness in the case, who was taken into custody along with Udayakumar, had given a statement that he had earlier turned hostile during the trail in the Thiruvananthapuram Fast-Track court as he had received a bribe of Rs 20,000 from those close to the accused.
Legal experts point out that the Crime Branch chargesheet contained several loopholes in favour of the key accused in the case. The chargesheet did not mention about the developments between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. in the Fort Police station on September 27, 2005, the day on which Udayakumar was taken into custody and was found dead.
Udayakumar was taken into custody by the three accused around 2.30 p.m. and he was subjected to torture till 4 p.m. But the first information report was taken only at 8 p.m. It was during this period that the conspiracy involving more police officials took place.
The Crime Branch chargesheet was silent on this part and it would have been a loophole for the three police constables, K Jithakumar, S V Sreekumar and K Soman, to escape from the charges of torture. The then sub-inspector Raveendran Nair, who had registered the FIR around 8 p.m., would have been made responsible for the torture that led to the death of Udayakumar.
Raveendran Nair is now made an approver in the case.
It is also learnt that the CBI had faced strong pressure from the top brass of the Police Department over arraigning more police officials as accused in the case, especially on charges of conspiracy and destroying evidence.
CBI crime-unit Inspector Pradeep Kumar who probed the case was even transferred to Chennai during the course of the probe