THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Crime Branch team probing the death of violinist Balabhaskar could not record the statement of the deceased musician’s driver. Arjun, a native of Thrissur, was reportedly at the wheel when the car met with an accident at Pallippuram near here last September. The Crime Branch sleuths had visited Thrissur the other day and directed the relatives to produce him at their office in Thiruvananthapuram at the earliest.
Crime Branch sources suspect Arjun to be in Assam. He had left his place about three months back and the cops said that travel is under the cloud of suspicion.Since Arjun was recuperating from the injuries suffered during the car crash, it was strange that he had left his place this soon, said a Crime Branch officer.
The Crime Branch sources said they need to record Arjun’s statements to verify who was driving the vehicle at the time of the accident. Balabhaskar’s wife Lakshmi had claimed that Arjun was driving the car, while Arjun had alleged that it was the musician who was driving.
Meanwhile, the cops did not spot any discrepancies in the statements given by the members of Vadakkunnathan temple trust and staff of a lodge where the musician and his family stayed during their visit. Meanwhile, it has been found that Balabhaskar’s car was over speeding on that fateful night. The image of the car was caught in a speed camera installed at Chalakkudy at 1.08 am. The car had met with the accident at Pallippuram by 3.45 am. This means it took less than 2.4 hours to cover a little more than 230 km.
‘Hard disk taken away’
Meanwhile, Shamnad, the juice shop owner in Kollam, has reportedly given a statement that the hard disk of the CCTV camera installed in his shop was taken away by Prakash Thambi, a former associate of the violinist who is now an accused in a gold smuggling case. The sleuths said the hard disk was taken away after the police launched probe into the accident. Shamnad later told reporters that Thambi did not take the hard disk, but it was the Crime Branch team probing the case who took it for inspection.