KOCHI: The Kerala State Police Complaint Authority (SPCA)Chairman Justice K Narayana Kurup on Wednesday expressed fears that the delay by the police to initiate probe in the Jisha murder case may have resulted in destroying of all evidences in the sensational case.
SPCA, in its first sitting on the Jisha case here, said this (lack of evidence) may be the reason for the police to bring to book the killers after nearly a month of the brutal murder.
30-year-old Jisha was sexually assaulted and brutally murdered at her home in Perumbavoor, near Kochi, on April 28, a case that had several parallels to the Nirbhaya rape in Delhi.
Even though SPCA summoned Mahipal Yadav, Inspector General of Police, Ernakulam Range and Yathish Chandra G H, Superintendent of Police, Ernakulam Rural, DySP Perumbavoor, Circle Inspector Kuruppampady and SI Kuruppampady to appear before it on Wednesday, they did not turn up claiming that SPCA has no authority to interfere in the probe.
Mahipal Yadav representing other four officials as well sent a letter to Justice K Narayana Kurup stating that SPCA was constituted as per the section 110 of Kerala Police Act for examining and inquiring the complaints and misconduct against police officers. He stated in the letter that SPCA is not Judicial Magistrate Court to interfere at this stage of the investigation.
However, Justice K Narayana Kurup said that IPS officer has wrongly interpreted the authority of SPCA and it can probe any misconduct by police including lapses made in investigation of any case. He said that SPCA has not interfered in the police investigation and summons were sent after it received complaint regarding lapses made by the investigation team. SPCA sent another summons to all five officer to meet Justice K Narayana Kurup in personal on June 2.
Justice Kurup said there were several lapses from the part of the police officials such as cordoning off of the crime spot, guarding the crime spot video recording the postmortem procedures and cremating the body. "We doubt that whether any evidence exist. Whether we should sit silent seeing that a young woman was brutally murdered and it has been almost 1 month past but police have no clue about the person who committed the crime. We don't think that police in the initial stage to any measure to protect the evidences and case was seriously probed," he said.