Kochi: The mystery over the Thiruvankulam mishap, in which four members of a family met a watery grave, deepened on Tuesday with the cops still probing both the suicide and accident angles.
“The involvement of a third party or another vehicle is ruled out. The autopsy report too ruled out any other cause and cited drowning as the cause of death. However, it is still a mystery why the vehicle deviated from the main road and went down the bylane nearly 50 metres before falling into the abandoned quarry. We are probing the suicide angle too,” CI K. Jinadevan said.
KWA assistant engineer V.V. Viju and his family were killed when their Tata Safari car skidded off the main road and fell into a 200-metre deep quarry at Sastham Mukal on the Kochi-Dhanushkodi national highway around 11 pm on Sunday. However, local residents came to know about the mishap only the next morning.
The quarry is located a little away from the main road and the car, proceeding to Thodupuzha from Kochi, suddenly entered the bylane on the right side upon reaching a sharp curve at Sastham Mukal. It then ran down the narrow road before breaking the fencing and falling into the 200-metre deep quarry.
“We checked the CCTV cameras a little away in the highway and noticed nothing unusual. The statements of the local residents were also tak-en. Though some persons heard a sound around 11 pm, they mistook it for a tanker lorry dumping waste, a usual practice,” another police official said.
The cops, however, said Viju faced no financial problem or family issues. “The family was, in fact returning after a short picnic. However, Viju had met with a mishap almost three years back and used to take pain killers. We’re probing whether he carried any during the trip. Another possibility is that there is another deviation some distance ahead from the spot – a narrow road on the right side towards Thiruvaniyoor. Whether he mistook the bylane for the other road is also being probed though the possibility for this is rare as the bylane is not a tarred one and runs along the road,” he said.
