KANHANGAD: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) made a dramatic start to the investigation into the Periya double murder case by recreating the crime. News channels beamed it live.
The CBI team from Thiruvananthapuram, led by superintendent of police Nandakumaran Nair, reached Kalliyot at 11 am and got to work.
The team relied on the charge sheet filed by the Crime Branch of Kerala Police to recreate the murder of Youth Congress workers Kripesh (19) and Sarath Lal PK (24).
According to the charge sheet, the Youth Congress workers were returning home from a temple committee meeting when they were waylaid and attacked by eight men on Kurankara Road in Kalliyot on February 17, 2019.
On Tuesday, the CBI team had eight masked men with rods waiting on Kurankara Road. When two men, standing in for Kripesh and Sarath Lal, drove in on their motorcycle, the eight men waylaid them and attacked them. Kripesh suffered a deep cut on the skull and ran down the hill.
Sarath Lal fell near his motorcycle on the road. "We recreated the crime as narrated in the charge sheet to see if it was possible to commit the crime on the road and for the accused to escape in the said time frame," said CBI deputy superintendent of police (DySP) T P Ananthakrishnan.
When asked what was the CBI's assessment, he said, "It is possible".
The CBI team also traced the route in the bushes through which Kripesh ran. "He ran 770 metres downhill before he collapsed and fell. We traced the route and took note of the point where his mobile phone was found," the officer said.
Kripesh was found by a youth who was out speaking on his phone. He had heard the cries of Kripesh in the bushes. By the time the youth found Kripesh, he was dead.
A dying Sarath Lal, soaked in blood, was spotted by his father's elder brother Damodaran and his sister Amritha who were returning from a wedding.
Damodaran spotted Sarath Lal's motorcycle and pulled over his jeep and ran to his nephew.
On Tuesday, the CBI recreated that scene, too, and had Damodaran drive to the spot in a jeep.
Sarath Lal had reportedly uttered the name of Gijin, the fifth accused in the case, to Damodaran before he died on the way to hospital.
Gijiin is the son of 'Sastha' Gangadharan, a CPM supporter, and was Sarath Lal's neighbour.
On Tuesday, the CBI officers had Damodaran narrate the sequence of events in detail and they noted it down.
DySP Ananthakumar said the CBI had spoken to the immediate family members of Sarath Lal and Kripesh. "We will return to Thiruvanathapuram tomorrow and return to question the other members mentioned in the charge sheet," he said.
The CBI will be verifying every aspect mentioned in the Kerala Police's charge sheet and will also launch its own investigation into the case.
The High Court of Kerala on September 30, 2019, quashed the charge sheet of the Crime Branch saying it was written based solely on the statements of the accused and it did not conduct forensic tests on the weapons allegedly used to kill Sarath Lal and Kripesh. To be sure, the Crime Branch listed rods as weapons used to attack the two Youth Congress workers, but the postmortem report said their bodies did not have injuries from such weapons.
Also, 40% of the 229 named as prosecution witnesses were affiliated to the CPM or linked to the crime.
The victims' families said the witnesses had no evidentiary value to help prosecute the accused and could turn hostile to sabotage the case.
The Crime Branch named 14 accused in the case. All of them were either CPM leaders, members, or supporters.
Kripesh and Sarath Lal's father Krishnan and Sathyanarayan complained the suspects they named in their statements were named as prosecution witnesses instead of naming them as accused.
For example, Gijin's father Gangadharan was named as a suspect but the Crime Branch made him a witness. "Why would he give a statement to help prosecute his son," said MK Baburaj, a Congress leader, lawyer, and family friend of Sathyanarayanan.
The other controversial names in the prosecution's memo of witnesses are Manjusha, the wife of accused no. 1 A Peethambaran; A Valsaraj, a CPM financier named by the victims' families are a conspirator; K Gopalan Nair, advocate and CPM leader; and VPP Mustafa, CPM district secretariat member.
Based on the order of the single bench of the Kerala High Court, the CBI re-registered the double murder case on October 23, 2019 but could not start the investigation because the Crime Branch refused to hand over the case diary.
The state government moved the division bench against the order.
On August 23, 2020, the division bench -- after sitting on the case for more than nine months -- upheld the single bench order.
The state government then moved the Supreme Court on September 13, 2020.
The apex court put an end to the agony of the families of the victims on December 1 and upheld the High Court order of a CBI probe into the double murder. It also directed the Kerala government to hand over the case diary to the CBI.
On Tuesday, a day after the local body polls, the CBI team finally entered Kalliyot with a bang.