KOCHI: At one point, the parents of musician Balabhaskar alleged a gold smuggling gang was involved in the suspicious death of their son in a car accident in September 2018. The CBI’s further investigation, however, has revealed the smuggling by Balabhaskar’s friends — Prakash Thampi and Vishnu Somasundaram — occurred between October of 2018 and May 2019, after his death. Both the CBI and the DRI investigated the smuggling case but were unable to find any proof linking Balabhaskar with the gang, or its connection to his death.
The CBI also said it did not find anything suspicious in Prakash holding on to Balabhaskar’s mobile phone after the accident. “The gold-smuggling activities occurred after the death of Balabhaskar,” the CBI report says. The violinist and his daughter died when their car rammed a tree in Pallippuram on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram in the early hours of September 25.
While ordering the additional investigation, the High Court questioned why Prakash, an accused in a gold smuggling case, hid the musician’s phone and refused to hand it over to Balabhaskar’s wife despite repeated requests. The interference of Prakash and Vishnu, who were arrested in connection with the smuggling case, is highly suspicious, the court observed.
The CBI’s supplementary report, in the possession of TNIE, said it examined this point by recording statements from witnesses and collecting documents from the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI). During an investigation into a gold smuggling case unearthed on May 13, 2019, the DRI found that the racket, involving Vishnu and Prakash, had been operating with the connivance of customs officers, including Radhakrishnan B, former superintendent of customs air intelligence, at Thiruvananthapuram airport.
The DRI arrested Prakash on May 29, 2019, and Vishnu on June 17, 2019. They were later released on bail.
The CBI said the case diary reveals Vishnu was introduced to Radhakrishnan by Balabhaskar to deal with his service tax matter, which Radhakrishnan dealt with in 2014 at the central excise department, Thiruvananthapuram. CBI scrutinised the service-tax documents and detected no irregularities.
The HC also directed the CBI to investigate the allegation that Prakash refused to hand over the phone to Balabhaskar’s wife, Lekshmi. In its report, the CBI said its probe did not reveal any suspicious activity. It said Lekshmi deposed that Prakash had never misused the phone, and no evidence to the contrary was found.
Prakash said he held on to the phone as it contained family pictures of Balabhaskar, Lekshmi, and their child. He claimed he had planned to return the phone once Lekshmi’s condition stabilised.
However, during the smuggling case probe, the DRI seized two phones from his house, one of them the Samsung Galaxy Note of Balabhaskar. Prakash got hold of it from Mangalapuram police station on September 25, 2018. The phone was examined, but no useful data related to Balabhaskar’s death was found. Prakash did not try to conceal the phone in his house, the CBI said.