The court heard the plea filed here on Thursday by the SIT probing the custodial death of Gade Sai Krishna in the Krishna Lanka police station, allegedly at the hands of Nagaraju and other police personnel. The plea was for 12 days’ custody of Nagaraju to interrogate and find out from him more details of the custodial torture and death and disapperance of the body of Sai Krishna.

The court directed the SIT to interrogate the suspended CI in the premises of the Central Prison in Rajamahendravaram, where he is currently serving a judicial remand. The interrogation, from 10 am to 5 pm should be in the presence of an advocate. Cops must do both audio and video recording of the proceedings during the interrogation, and these must be submitted to the court later.

Attempts were made by some cops to save the accused CI from the case. “Constable Babu Rao and head constable Sambaiah allegedly removed the CCTV footage from the Krishna Lanka police station by motivatedly replacing the originally installed four hard disks with others,” as per their remand report submitted to the court by the SIT.

Southrika Technologies which originally installed the CCTV cameras, network video recorder and four hard disks said that the seized four hard disks by the forensic authorities as part of ongoing inquiry were not the ones they installed at the police station. No footage was found in the hard disks seized on June 19, though the installation was done 18 months ago.

Meanwhile, NTR district collector G. Lakshmisha ordered a magisterial inquiry into the custodial death of Sai Krishna in Krishna Lanka police station.

Notably, constable Babu Rao and head constable Sambaiah denied any link to the custodial death case when asked by the magistrate who remanded them to judicial custody up to July 15.