KOCHI: Like it happens with all unsolved crimes, in Mishel’s case too the cops kept on saying the oft-repeated dialogue, ‘the investigation is in the final stage and more evidence needs to be collected.’
Fed up with the jargon, Shaji Varghese, Mishel’s father filed a petition before the High Court alleging discrepancies in the police story.
He alleged the official story did not match the facts and the available material evidence.But investigators begged to differ. They said the inquiry was not at all prejudiced. “The probe was carried out efficiently using scientific investigation methods. All aspects such as collecting call details of the mobile phone used by Mishel was done in a systematic and thorough manner,” said the cops.
The postmortem says
According to the postmortem report, the cause of death is ‘death due to drowning’. But the exact time of death couldn’t be arrived at. However, the police surgeon, who conducted the postmortem, said the death might have occurred six hours after her last meal. The autopsy report said only normal changes that occur in a body left in the backwaters for more than 20 hours had been found in the deceased’s body.
Timeline of the investigation
The state Police Chief had ordered the investigation by the Crime Branch on March 13. Following this, a special team comprising CBCID SP P K Madhu, DySP K A Sasidharan and nine other police officers was constituted. Later, DySP George Cherian took over the probe from Sasidharan on June 8. It had been alleged that the transfers of the investigating officers affected the probe. But police officers said, all the transfers were routine ones. They refuted the allegations and called them false. During the entire investigation, no evidence pointing towards homicide has been received yet.