KOCHI: The state government on Tuesday approached the Kerala High Court challenging the order of the Additional Special Sessions Court, Ernakulam, rejecting the crime branch’s plea to forward the memory card in the 2017 actor abduction and sexual assault case for forensic examination.
The appeal stated that during the examination of the memory card in Thiruvananthapuram FSL on January 10, 2020, for the purpose of creating a cloned copy, the experts noticed a change in the hash value (indicating unauthorised access) of the card. Though the change in the hash value was reported to the trial court on January 29, 2020, it was not disclosed to the prosecution till February 2022.
“Immediately on coming to know about the change in the hash value of the memory card which was supposed to be protected from any interference without there being judicial proceedings, the prosecution requested for forensic examination as part of further investigation in the case, which was absolutely necessary to avoid the likelihood of the accused taking undue advantage of that,” the crime branch plea said.
The appeal stated that the court’s refusal amounts to interference in the investigation which is in the sole realm of the investigating agency. The reason stated to refuse the request of the investigating officer is unsustainable in law. According to the crime branch, though the FSL report specifically shows that the memory card was illegally accessed on December 13, 2018, the trial court did not mention the date of last access in the proceedings and failed to take note of the relevance of such illegal access. Instead, it was stated in the proceedings that the trial court kept the memory card from March 20, 2019, which is obviously after December 13, 2018.