KOCHI: The state government on Monday approached the Kerala High Court seeking to quash the Single Judge order transferring the probe into the murder of Youth Congress leader S P Shuhaib at Edayannur in Kannur on February 12, to the CBI.According to the state government, the Single Judge passed the order within three weeks after the incident and when the SIT had arrested 11 persons involved in the attack and recovered the weapons and vehicles used in the commission of the offence. Two main accused were arrested within five days of the incident. No opportunity was given to the appellants to file a counter affidavit and the writ petition was allowed on the second date of effective posting.
There was no material before the Single Judge apart from newspaper reports and FIR produced along with the petition. If the judge had examined the case diary, then the sequence of events and collection of materials could have been analysed and understood in the proper perspective, but that was not done. It is clear the investigation was not influenced by any external factor as one among the accused, who was allegedly close to political officers, was arrested at the very beginning the probe, the state submitted.
The Single Judge proceeded to pass an order without looking into the investigation by the SIT. The state’s submission that the police investigation was being carried out in the best possible manner and there was no basis for transferring the probe to the CBI, was not considered by the Single Judge. The order was in contravention of the principles of law that power to transfer the case to the CBI has to be exercised in rarest of the rare cases, the appeal stated.
The findings of the Single Judge that the investigation agency could not recover the weapons immediately through the accused Akash and Rejil, who were arrested on February 18, and that an eyewash attempt to recover the weapons was made after the filing of the petition, are highly conjectural. The finding of the Single Judge that the recovery of weapon at the instance of accused Byju was a mere eyewash, was wrong. The state government also opposed the directive of the Single Judge to invoke UAPA in the case. It also stated the Single Judge did not have any jurisdiction to entertain such a writ petition in view of Section 3 of the Kerala High Court Act.