KOCHI: A fungus-infested video cassette has emerged as a crucial evidence in a 30-year-old murder case. It relates to the death of an abkari contractor -- K G Munna -- whose charred body was found in his partly burnt car at Srikrishnapuram in Palakkad on April 11, 1992.
The CBI has initiated procedures to recover the content of the cassette after having obtained a favourable order from the CBI Special Court on April 11, despite the accused opposing that video material cannot considered as an evidence under Section 145 of the Evidence Act, an officer said.
The CBI decided to recover the content as it had recorded the statement of the prime eyewitness under Section 161 of CrPC. The evidence in the cassette was vital, after the witness turned hostile during a hearing on March 28, 2022, said the source.
According to the CBI, the statement of the eyewitness -- who has been living abroad for several years -- was collected after much effort. A CBI officer had gone to Qatar and recorded his statement at the Indian Embassy office on October 31, 2004. The examination of the witness was recorded in a video cassette, without the knowledge of the witness, and was produced before the court. The witness had given a statement at the time that he had accompanied Munna and he had witnessed the whole incident.
The court allowed the CBI to send the cassette to the forensic science lab in Kochi to remove the fungus and to get the data transferred to a CD. In his latest hearing, the witness deposed that he had not accompanied Munna at the time of the incident.
Though he admitted that the CBI officer had questioned him at the Indian Embassy in Doha and recorded his statement in the presence of an embassy officer, he submitted that “such a statement was given as tutored by CBI and under compulsion”.
The CBI had taken over the murder case following a Kerala High Court order. The central agency found that Munna was murdered and his body was transported to Thuvassery Kunnu in the boot of his Ambassador car. The body was later kept on the left front seat of the car, which was burnt using spirit and palmolein.
The CBI had arraigned 21 accused in the case, including a former MLA and three police officers. It found that Munna was murdered as planned allegedly by P Vijayan, a liquor baron and the brother of former MLA P Kumaran, due to a business rivalry after Munna wrested liquor shops through auction in the Mannarkkad area.