THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In a major twist in the sensational Udayakumar custodial torture death case, one of the witnesses who had deposed against the accused police officers, turned hostile in the CBI court here on Tuesday. Former ASI of Fort police station, Jalaludeen was earlier made a witness in the case and he had given statements to the CBI sleuths that he had seen the accused police personnel taking Udayakumar into the custody.
However, he changed his statement in the trial proceedings which are under way. He said he had not seen any of the officers taking Udayakumar into custody and came to know about the death the next day when he came to the station. The change in deposition from a witness comes close on the heels of another witness and former forensic officer deposing against the accused police officers. On Saturday, former assistant director of Forensics, Thomas Alexander identified the galvanised iron pipe, an iron bed and a bench used for assaulting Udayakumar in Fort police station.
Sources said the sudden change in the statement could be a fall-out of ‘pressure’ from some quarters. However, CBI sleuths said this would not affect the case. Udayakumar was killed after he was allegedly rolled over by an iron pipe as part of third-degree measures which was adopted by the police earlier to solve a crime. Earlier, Dr Ushakumari, a former forensic director, had also identified the pipe and she also revealed before the court that Udayakumar had suffered fatal injuries in the assault.
27-year-old P Udayakumar was killed in 2005 in police custody at Fort police station. The post-mortem examination had confirmed he had suffered 22 wounds including rolling with an iron pipe. Later, the Crime Branch of state police have started investigating the case and they arrested three police constables K Jithakumar, S V Sreekumar and K Soman with murder, torture and illegal detention in connection with the custodial death.
Udayakumar, a resident of Manacaud, was taken into custody on September 27 after he was found with one Suresh Kumar under ‘suspicious circumstances’.He was allegedly tortured in custody by policemen who wanted to know the source of `4,020, which was found in his purse.The Crime Branch later found out that Udayakumar’s mother, Prabhavathi Amma, had given him the money for buying clothes and provisions. However, Suresh Kumar turned hostile and three constables were released on bail. Later, Prabhavathi demanded the government to initiate CBI probe and the agency has finally accepted to investigate the case. The CBI has also given a chargesheet against the police officers who had assaulted Udayakumar.